Sufixos -dom, -hood, -ship: qual a diferença?

Hi there!

As well as Portuguese English has a number of different types of words, from different origins, and sometimes the process of word formation respect a lot of "rules." I just said that in quotation marks due to fact English does not seem to follow so many strict rules.

All sufixes you wrote: "-dom, -hood and -ship" are used to create "nouns" (substantivos) related to groups of things, all parts together, a whole thing that can or cannot be separated in parts, the essence (or the core) of a concept and everything related to that, and so on... they are quite the same at first but, after a while you can see lots of diffencies among them.
-Ship, for instance, it seems to form more abstract nouns. -Hood is used in many words to give the idea of qualities shared, length of time, experiences that make something unique... -Dom is the most tricky of them, we can see both abstract and pure solid things, but all of them seem to be what we call "coletivos" in Portuguese. Only my guesses, right!
Of course you can learn how those words are formed, sufixes and prefixes are really great, but you will need too memorize the words, eventually. I think reading is the best way to do that, and I mean books, papers, scientific stuff, comic books, crosswords and puzzles (which I love by the way), anything you can read.

Some words I can remember just now with the sufixes you mentioned are:
Kingdom, stardom, boredom...
Neighbourhood, manhood, childhood, boyhood...
Membership, friendship, fellowship, relationship...

I strongly recommend you read more to fulfil your needs and you should wait for more replies, OK!

Cheers!