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Halsti t1_je67n11 wrote

at least you dont have to wonder what gender "spelling" is. or wonder about the rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

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HlTLERS_HIDDEN_CHILD t1_je6e92w wrote

German spelling bee must be wild.

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ox2bad t1_je6g67z wrote

They don’t have spelling bees in German. They just eliminate spaces between words sometimes. “Rindfleisch” = cow meat (beef) and the end is “Gesetz” which means law.

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araralc t1_je774g1 wrote

Sometimes i wanna cry when people seriously believe that "this German word doesn't exist in English" but in the end it's just a lot of words without a space in-between. I feel like a part of it is that language terms sometimes try to universalize things that are different from language to language. Some languages don't merge whole words (they might have words by merging, but it changes the structure of them) some merge a couple words, and some merge a lot of words. Some traditionally don't even have spaces at all.

I'd say English falls into the middle category. Starlight are two words in one. I haven't studied proper English grammar but if i remember correctly in my main language similar words (with whole merging) are considered neologisms and actually two words. In English i feel like it's considered one. Which draws a weird line when you consider German comparatively, and not individually.

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orbital_narwhal t1_je79zs6 wrote

> this German word doesn't exist in English

It’s very common that a language has a distinct word for a concept for which no distinct word exists in another language. But that’s not the same as composite words. Although sometimes composites take on a different or additional meaning than just the combination of their parts (see below).

I can think of a bunch of German words that really do not exist in English except for their loanwords:

  • Zeitgeist
  • Weltschmerz
  • Wanderlust
  • Fernweh
  • Zugzwang
  • Ohrwurm
  • sturmfrei
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araralc t1_je7bqrb wrote

Yeah, usually the "this word doesn't exist in another language" is about concepts or other things that are culturally influenced. But somehow I've seen a bunch of those lists or mentions that are actually just a simple German composite that can be translated into other languages if you don't make "it gotta be a single word" a rule. So like, completely translatable stuff. I always saw those and would think it was like saying "starlight" isn't a word in Portuguese because "luz estelar" are two words, but with bigger merges.

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CurrentIndependent42 t1_je6x80c wrote

Nah the spelling is consistent. The length is hardly an issue than asking a kid to spell a whole English sentence: most of those words are compound nouns that might even be similar in English, just that English uses spaces or words like ‘of’ in between.

“Wow German has a single word for a law about the transmission of tasks for beef labelling supervision!”

I mean yeah, the equivalent of ‘beeflabellingsurveillancetasktransmissionlaw’. Or if we break it down twice, ‘beeffleshlabellingoverwatchingoutgivingoverdraggingslaw’.

It’s not like German has a trillions completely different ultra long words primed for this. They can just be produced as part of the grammar without the convention of spaces. A lot of compound nouns in English could be treated as single words in the same way going purely based on the actual spoken language.

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Beetsa t1_je6zcvy wrote

And of course those examples are very artificial. At least in Dutch, such words would be correct, but not really used in practice. Compound words of more than 3 parts are rare in real speech. (Although U have used bijbelstudieleidershalfjaarsevaluatie) a couple of times.

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spolite t1_je6m5i5 wrote

Yeah, I don't even know what gender spelling is...

But isn't that a German compound word (since noun clusters aren't a thing in German)?

Like, even if a native German speaker had never heard that compound word, they'd still understand it because it's just a combination of other words?

And also, aren't they made up a lot of the time and thus won't necessarily be found in the dictionary?

I mean... can German compound words be misinterpreted or "put together" incorrectly? And does it happen very often? Almost like... it's expected?

English isn't a phonetic language, it's just all over the place... A grown ass native speaker of English will screw up spelling stuff all the time and it's kinda just normal... normal to keep effing up our own language.

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Berloxx t1_je6vg8t wrote

To answer you questions, yes, yes, yes, yes, and lastly, meh, maybe, as a German native speaker I don't really have misinterpreted such words but that may not be the norm, don't know definitely.

You got it 🙂

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orbital_narwhal t1_je7ahrj wrote

> Like, even if a native German speaker had never heard that compound word, they'd still understand it because it's just a combination of other words?

Usually yes but occasionally compound words take on a different or additional meaning than one might think based purely off the meaning of the compounds. Furthermore, homonyms are a thing in German and it’s not always immediately clear which meaning a compound carries in an unknown compound words. Also, some (compound) words take on new meanings over time when they’re often used metaphorically.

Examples: Weltschmerz, Ohrwurm, sturmfrei

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