Sprachstamm

Sprachstamm is a term used in linguistics and language teaching to denote the base form of a word from which its inflected or derived forms are built. In everyday grammar, the Sprachstamm roughly corresponds to the stem of the word—the part that remains when inflectional endings are removed. In many cases, the Sprachstamm also serves as the canonical form used in dictionaries and as the basis for word formation.

There are two related senses. Morphological use: the stem or Wortstamm that receives inflectional endings (for example, regular German verbs and nouns share a common stem across some forms). Historical use: the Sprachstamm can refer to the historical root or proto-form of a word that connects related words in a language family; reconstructing such stems is a task of historical and comparative linguistics. Because of irregularities and stem changes (such as vowel alternations, umlaut, or suppletion), the Stamm is not always uniform across all forms.

The term is more common in German-language linguistic literature and language instruction. In English-language contexts, the terms stem, root, or lemma are more widely used, though the German term often covers both the morphological and historical senses. The concept highlights that word formation relies on a core element that may or may not align exactly with the dictionary headword.