German Language Stack Exchange is a bilingual question and answer site for speakers of all levels who want to share and increase their knowledge of the German language. It's 100% free, no registration required.
Sign up to join this community
Translated they both mean "recognition, identification" (the act of recognizing or fact of being recognized).
Are they synonymous? Is there any difference in usage or meaning? Is one maybe the "older" version of the other? could you write me examples in which one is preferable than the other?
There is already a good answer on the verbs erkennen and anerkennen. But you asked for the nouns. And they are quite different.
die Anerkennung
means recognition, praise. It's expressedly noticing something or someone or someone's acchievements and praising them, showing respect. A frequent phrase is (jemandem) Anerkennung zollen.
die Erkennung
is almost exclusively used in a technical context, meaning recognition, e.g. Mustererkennung (pattern recognition) or Gesichtserkennung (face recognition).
Two other related nouns are
das Erkennen
meaning the act of recognizing something or someone and
die Erkenntnis
meaning the result of the recognizing process.
These are two quite different words. And their meaning also differs whether the object is a person or an object.
Etwas erkennen means to recognize something, i.e. used to describe the fact of recognizing a far away or very small object.
Etwas anerkennen is a term to describe acceptance of a fact or a treaty. Not very often used expression. A government for instance may accept a treaty as valid. That would be
Die Regierung erkennt den Friedensvertrag an. (Duden, Fall 2, case 1a is similar but more general)
Similar here: akzeptieren.
Jemanden anerkennen (more common: jemandem Anerkennung entgegenbringen) means bringing recognition towards somebody, i.e. by complimenting his work.
Matthias anerkannte Leo, der Bemühungen um eine friedliche Beilegung des Konfliktes unternahm. (Duden, Fall 1b)
Jemanden erkennen is an old term (used i.e. in the bible) to describe having sex with somebody. Sounds silly if you use it nowadays. It can be used in the first case though, meaning to recognize somebody from a distance or by remembering their face. Compare:
Als Josef seine Brüder sah, erkannte er sie. (Gen 42,7)
Adam erkannte Eva, seine Frau; sie wurde schwanger und gebar Kain. (Gen 4,1)
