Let me share with you something I learned from Addy Milldike when I was working on “Links 2-3-4”.

Every syllable is supposed to start with a consonant (there are exceptions, will get to that in a second). If you have the word Herz (which means heart) and want to make it plural, it’s Herzen. In English Herz- en would look correct (just like fishing would become fish- ing), but it’s not. Like I mentioned before, (almost) all syllables start with consonants, so if a suffix starts with a vowel (like -en) it will take the last consonant from the previous syllable. So Herzen’s syllables would be Her- zen.

Now, for the exceptions. Compound words do not follow the rules as clearly. Compound words are split up based on their words. If you have the word Großeltern (means grandparents) for example, that would be split up as Groß– el- tern due to Groß and eltern being 2 different words. Which is also where “darunter” comes in, it’s even more different since it has a joining consonant “r.” In this case you put the joining consonant with the second syllable to make da- run- ter.

I know a little German,