Talk:-lein

Derived Terms

Currently, the listed derived terms are not particularly notable (except for Fräulein) and derived in the usual way (the vowel is umlauted in the same way as with -chen and then -lein is appended). Maybe they should be removed (again except for Fräulein). (Tischlein and Männlein might be common examples because of the fairytale "Tischlein deck dich" and the song "Ein Männlein steht im Walde", but I don't think these words are especially common except in reference to said fairytale or song.) Also I'm not sure about it always sounding "old" in modern Standard German - related forms are still common in southern dialects and words like Mäuslein don't sound old to me, although -lein seems to be much less common nowadays (except in poems and children's books) with -chen being preferred. 95.88.237.20 11:03, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Why do you think regularly derived terms should be removed? They are still "derived terms", aren't they? I agree that Tischlein and Männlein are rather uncommon, however as long as they are citable (which they most likely are) they should still be here as terms derived from -lein, and when their entries are created we can place a usage note there. Longtrend (talk) 11:15, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, you're right. I've just seen that there actually is a [[Category:German_diminutive_nouns]] (I don't know how to properly format this link), so apparently there really should be separate pages for them, and consequently they can be listed as derived terms. 95.88.237.20 10:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)