German compound nouns are just written without spaces. There’s no grammatical difference between “Schlafsack” (= Schlaf “sleep” + Sack “bag”) and “sleeping bag”, except the way they’re written down. In English we analyse a “word” as “a thing you write down with spaces on either side”, which is valid as a definition or as an analysis, but it’s not what we really think of when we talk about words, which we think of as something more fundamental.
If, tomorrow, we decided in English to write compound nouns without spaces, the language would have suddenly gained thousands and thousands of words, yet the only real difference would be a rule about writing things down. Spoken English would be exactly the same, so nothing fundamental about the actual bits of English would have changed.
One of my frustrations with English is that spaces in compound nouns are arbitrary. We have fishbowl but also fish tank.
Well the rest of the rules around written English are arbitrary, why would this one be different?!
I think I’d write fish bowl separately though.
What would you call this?
delightful?
Username checks out
Depends if it’s a fish bowl (a bowl for a fish) or a fishbowl (a big watered down drink you can buy from bad nightclubs)
Not that I am aware of, sorry.
All the words posted before by the others in the thread are made up, and some of them aren’t even good at pretending to be German.
All words are made up…
Yeah but not all of them are rectently made up by an individual person for the purpose of being posted here in order to mislead others about words that are in practical use.
Off topic, but in English, it’s called an ‘audio processing disorder’
What? No say the exact same words again. What’s a singdis? Audio process singdis order? Audio processing disorder! Oh, I have one of those! Why? What’s up? I wasn’t listening.
ADHD?
No but they do have a word for asking about it
Dumme Angewohnheit.
Shaddenlisten
Ze Mouthen iz tu Quiken
German words don’t tend to be long and convoluted. That’s just a stereotype due to writing rules.
A sentence spelled without spaces isn’t a word.
Or as some would say, classic wortlängenbedingte Sprachwesensverfälschung*. See the space there inbetween ☝️?
*amtlich korrigiert
Sprachwesensverfälschung, wenn ich bitten darf.
(Word length induced misconception of a language’s nature)
Would that end bit basically translate to “if I may”/“if you will”? I know a more literal translation would be “if I may ask/request”. Mein Deutsch ist mittelmäßig und ich brauche mehr Übung.
Not really, it’s a phrase. Basically “if you please”.
I figured it was a phrase that didn’t have a direct translation to English. I believe my initial translation of “if I may”/“if you will” is correct then since I’ve heard/used “if you please” in the same way in English. Either way thanks for clarifying!
Those two are way less offensive. I (ironically) used this phrase to poke fun at them. It is rather sarcastic and implies that they really should have. At least in my understanding of the English language.
Stereotype?
Stereo type?
Stereo-type?
That’s just a regular english word.
What?
Oh, why do you care? You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it anyway :)
