Is there a difference between the German suffixes -ation and -ierung?
Examples are
- Identifikation vs. Identifizierung
- Publikation vs Publizierung
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4I would recommend to change this to -tion and -ierung, see Abstraktion and Abstrahierung.– RoyPJFeb 15, 2018 at 16:02
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2Also, I think that the -ierung form more or less describes the action, while the -tion form describes the state itself. Nevertheless I can't really explain it nor have any reference besides my feeling.– RoyPJFeb 15, 2018 at 16:04
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@ RoyPJ: Right, I did no think of that case. I edited the question.– NashVioFeb 15, 2018 at 16:08
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2 Answers
As RoyPJ mentions and the German Duden denotes the following differences:
- mostly, in common usage, they can be used both ways.
- sometimes, there is the subtle difference between indication of action and indication of state.
- the suffix "ation" denotes the result of an action,
- the suffix "ierung" the action itself. But, as a native speaker of German, this is subtle in many situations.
My source (in German) is https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/_ation__ierung
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Thanks PiedPiper and others for correction of my English - all my I* products I use from time to time do correct my English writings to German, and I always try to correct back... Typing on a IPhone with default language German is hard under these circumstances.– WalterFeb 17, 2018 at 17:55
-ation tends to denote a process as a whole or a notion, possibly even an object (cf. Publikation in the sense of published work as a printed artifact, Spezifikation as a technical document ), while -ierung focuses on the process over time. Examples would be:
- Abstraktion - Abstrahierung
- Indikation - Indizierung
- Publikation - Publizierung
- Spezifikation - Spezifizierung
I cannot provide a reference other than the intuition of a native speaker. I can, however, give evidence that the difference is not clear-cut. In particular there are word pairs where the individual items carry wildly differing meanings and which cannot be substituted for each other:
- Differentiation - Differenzierung ( math. operation vs attention to differences in detail )
- Kontraktion - Kontrahierung ( redution in volume vs. establishing a contract )
- Reservation - Reservierung ( segregated territory vs. booking in advance )
