Wortanfang

Wortanfang is a linguistic term that refers to the initial part of a word. It denotes the segment from the beginning up to a boundary such as the first syllable or the first morpheme. In phonology, the Wortanfang roughly corresponds to the onset or the initial sounds of the word; in orthography this often aligns with the first letters used to spell the word.

The concept is used across subfields of linguistics to describe how words begin, how beginnings interact with sound changes, and how prefixes or initial morphemes influence word formation. The Wortanfang can include phonological material like initial consonant clusters (for example Sch- in Schnee or Str- in Straße) or initial vowels (as in Auto). In morphology, it may also encompass derivational prefixes such as un-, ver-, or be-, which attach at the beginning of a base form.

In compound words, the Wortanfang often corresponds to the leftmost element or to the part that immediately forms the beginning of the compound, influencing how the word is parsed during analysis. This can be relevant for understanding stress patterns, alliteration in poetry, or rules of capitalization in orthography, where the initial segment interacts with syntactic or stylistic conventions.

Wortanfang is a descriptive term rather than an independent grammatical category. It provides a convenient label for discussing word-initiating phenomena and is used in lexicography, phonology, morphology, and language teaching to describe how words start and how their beginnings affect pronunciation, meaning, and structure.