Re: Why does German favor long compound words?


Nigel Greenwood wrote:
Frank W. Steiner wrote:
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.

But this is completely wrong! As phogl of Åbo/Turku (sorry, don't
know your name) has explained in great detail, each unit of that
monstrous compound has an easily understood meaning & can be used on
its own. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the compounds are in fact
German calques: eg lento-kone = Flug-zeug (my hyphens).

"Aliupseeri" is certainly a German calque via Swedish, and I tend to
think that "lentokone" is, too.

Permit me to be slightly sceptical about phogl's claim that this word
is actually used. Well, I suppose it might occur on a notice at an
airfield, but it's hardly the sort of word you could casually drop into
a conversation in a Helsinki bar -- or even one in Turku!

Not in a casual conversation, but in military officialese. Anyway, it
is an attested word, not a word someone made up just for laughs.

.

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