Re: Why does German favor long compound words?


Frank W. Steiner wrote:
On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:55:02 +0200, O-V R:nen wrote:

"Frank W. Steiner" <steinfw@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:00:49 -0800, phoglund wrote:

There are lots more languages out there which at least to some extent
"favour long compound words". My native language,. Finnish, comes up
with lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an
actually used word (not a facetious proposal),

That's totally different from what it is done in German. In German you
just run together words that have a meaning of their own, whereas in
Finnish you append together unit upon unit, but most (each?) of those
units makes no sense unless integrated in a word.

You are confusing Finnish with Greenlandic or whatever. The example above
is simply a string of ordinary nouns after one another

That's not the usual way for Finnish to create its long words though.

Oh yes, it is.

.

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