Noun formation
I was telling Michelle about how "Gesundheit" is formed from "gesund" and the suffix "-heit".
"It's a noun-forming suffix -- it means '-ness'. Like Sicherheit from sicher and Freiheit from frei."
Unfortunately for me, neither of my other examples ends in "-ness" in English; they mean security and freedom, respectively. So much for "-ness"!
Then there's "-keit", which I think is just a phonological process acting on "-heit" (for example "aber des Herrn Wort bleibet in Ewigkeit"; also the observation of Wittgenstein that I will someday use in the dedication of my book: "Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt"). But Michelle suggested that it means "kiteness; the quality of being a kite".
