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I was studying German with a YouTube video and the sentence "Gott erschuf Mann und Frau" and the instructor said that using "erschuf" here would be better than using "schuf" to show respect to God, I translated the sentence using the 2 words and they both mean "created" I was wondering if there's another non-direct meaning, I'd be thankful if someone could explain why "erschaffen" shows more respect than "schaffen" while they have the same meaning.

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dwds.de is very helpful with such questions, apart from the dictionary section you also get "collocations". From the ways in which a verb occurs with different objects, you can often see, what the meaning difference is about. There is even a function that extracts those combinations that distinguish two words most strongly, so in our case: https://www.dwds.de/wp/?q=erschaffen&comp-method=diff&comp=schaffen&display=lemma&pos=Verb&minstat=0&minfreq=5&by=logDice&limit=20&view=table&table=&mode=

First, they say that "erschaffen" is a higher stylistic level (https://www.dwds.de/wb/erschaffen). Maybe yes, but maybe this is not always felt. "Gott schuf/erschuf Himmel und Erde" do not sound any different to me.

But there are also meaning differences: "erschaffen" seems to convey that something is brought into existence which didn't exist before, and that's often a thing in a narrow sense. In contrast, "schaffen" has all sorts of uses with a weaker meaning, in which a situation is changed rather than created from scratch:

  • Platz schaffen (make space)
  • Vertrauen schaffen (to build trust)
  • Arbeitsplätze schaffen (to create jobs)
  • Klarheit schaffen (to provide clarification)

In such cases with abstract words as direct objects, "erschaffen" could not be used at all. Conversely, however, I think that "erschaffen" could always be replaced by "schaffen". So "erschaffen" seems more specific, used especially in contexts like "to create a new world; to create by magic, to create a work of art".

Then of course, there is "schaffen" in the sense of "manage to do", like "Er wird die Prüfung schaffen" (he will pass the exam). But note that this is a different verb: in the sense of "manage" the perfect is "hat geschafft" (e.g. an exam), but in the sense of create, it is "hat geschaffen" (like "hat erschaffen").

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  • One question I think still remains is whether the meaning of "erschaffen" can be analyzed in terms of root and prefix "er-" + "schaffen". Verbs with the "er-" prefix and tricky in general for English speakers; there is no recognizable cognate and the definitions for the nonprefixed and prefixed versions are usually very similar if not the same. DWDS gives the meaning of "er-" as "drückt in Bildungen mit Verben aus, dass etw. erfolgreich abgeschlossen wird, zum gewünschten Erfolg führt, dass man eine Sache bekommt, erreicht," but it's hard to see how it applies here,
    – RDBury
    Commented Sep 3 at 6:37
  • Yes, because "schaffen" already has the same meaning... But if er- is redundant here, this is not a big problem.
    – Alazon
    Commented Sep 3 at 8:27
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'Schaffen' means 'to manage sth'/ 'to cope with'/ 'to overcome'. 'Erschaffen' [both with two f] means the power of 'creating sth. new' [out of nth.]

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