So, there’s a post about how Bertie Wooster’s “what ho!” is a corruption of Beowulf’s “Hwaet!” And @fremedon and @oldshrewsburyian wrote up some things I decided to voice.
Honestly, as a German I can not quite understand the obsession of the English speaking world with the question whether a word exists or not. If you have to express something for which there is no word, you have to make a new one, preferably by combining well-known words, and in the very same moment it starts to exist. Agree?
Deutsche Freunde, could you please create for me a word for the extreme depression I feel when I bend down to pick up a piece of litter and discover two more pieces of litter?
um = around
die Welt = world
die Umwelt = environment
ver = prefix to indicate something difficult or negative, a change that leads to deterioration or even destruction that is difficult to reverse or to undo, or a strong negative change of the mental state of a person
der Müll = garbage, trash, rubbish, litter
-ung = -ing
die Vermüllung = littering
ver- = see before
zweifeln = to doubt
-ung = see before
die Verzweiflung = despair, exasperation, desperation
die Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung = …
This is a german compound on the spot master class and I am LIVING
=the corner in which you retreat when you´re desperate because of your fear when being unable to form monster words
*eye twitch*
But what I want to see now is two germans arguing over the construction of one of these monster words.
@shiplocks-of-love I don’t think that will happen. The words make perfect sense. I think if German is your mother tongue you get a feeling for combining words, like a
Monsterwortbildungsgespür
Monster = monster
Wort = word
Bildung(s) = formation
Gespür = intuition
;-)
🤡
Sprachirrgartenbelustigungsbeitrag
die Sprache = language
• irren = to become lost (also: to err, to be mistaken; to wander, to stray)
• der Garten = garden
der Irrgarten = maze, knot garden
• be- = prefix with a variety of functions: ¹as part of a compound word, it denotes a processing or change of state; ²as part of a compound word, it denotes a touch; ³as part of a compound word, it denotes a more intensive preoccupation with or thematization of something; ⁴it forms from a noun an adjective with a pseudo-participle form because the corresponding verb does not exist; ⁵as a prefix, it forms a transitive verb from a previously intransitive verb; ⁶as a prefix of a verb, it shifts the focus and thus changes the sentence structure
• lustig = funny
• -ung = suffix turning an adjective/adverb into a noun
die Belustigung = amusement, entertainment, merriment
der Beitrag = contribution, article in a newspaper or magazine, posting on social media, input to a discussion
Bloody love this language <3<3<3
The thing is, since in German you have to decline/conjugate many words in relation to the noun they are refering to those monster words actually serve a purpose of making the language simpler.
A common example is a (as in any) red wine (ein roter Wein) as compaired to the compound a red wine (ein Rotwein). If rot is an adjective it has to be conjugated: der rote Wein - des roten Weins - die roten Weine - and many more. But it if rot is part of the noun you only have to decline Wein: der Rotwein - des Rotweins - die Rotweine.
So, die Verzweiflung über die Vermüllung der Umwelt is way longer than Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung and you would have to know three grammatical genders and the words’ respective declinations. Whereas for Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung you only need to know that Verzweiflung is grammatically feminine (die) and its deklinations.
-s- // the glue that keeps german compound words together
repost // self explanatory
Doomscrollaufhellungsrepost // a repost to brighten up your doom scroll
You‘re Welcome!
The thing that I always want to point out to English speakers marvelling at German compounds is that we do this too! It’s a thing that Germanic languages are especially prone to!
It’s just conventional in English to keep writing spaces in between larger compounds, whereas in German it’s conventional to remove them. But they sound the same! Grammatically, they’re identical!
You could call it the…
English-German compound word space omission overadmiration fallacy
please i need you to watch this deadpan german linguistics professor making an incredibly catchy nerd pop song and dancing it’s been stuck in my head all day
“fish don’t even know theyre wet” and? you don’t even know youre luft (air equivalent of wet)
This is a really good example of how we can just make up words that work. “Luft” is a perfect word for this it feels correct and we understand and can feel it.
Like it would’ve necessarily work with other words but “luft” is a combination of sounds that means luft (air equivalent of wet).
Thank you but the reason it works is because it is a deliberately chosen word!
The closest word we have in English for ‘wet but with air’ would be ‘aerated’, which is the past principle of the verb ‘aerate’. As a multi syllable Latin derived word, aerated wouldn’t feel equivalent to wet even if you just used it as an adjective in a sentence- so to have something that feels like ‘wet’ I looked for a monosyllabic air-related word with a German root.
As many have pointed out in the notes, ‘Luft’ means air in a lot of languages, because it comes from the proto-Germanic word ‘luftuz’. It’s also used in English as a chess term, and is a doublet of ‘loft’. Because it’s rare in conversational English but has the right etymology to evoke the idea of air and the texture of ‘wet’, it is very easily appropriated for the concept of ‘air equivalent of wet’.
