help with German

Maybe "Aquadag"? ...Jim Thompson

to

compound words I believe the technical term is

maybe harder for parsers, but it is better for searches such as google

-Lasse

Joerg schrieb:

Hello,

but in english there are a lot of words with several different meanings too.

Bye

John Larkin schrieb:

Hello,

long time ago, the writer Mark Twain was travelling in europe and wrote about the Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän, a compound of Donau (danube), Dampf (steam), Schiff (ship), fahrt (course) and Kapitän (captain).

Bye

So, what's the longest word in Geerman? Is there such a thing?

Do these compound words appear in dictionaries, or are they made up as needed?

Yes, we mostly do that to confuse the non-native speakers. Especially words such as "cleave", "sanction", "citation" and "enjoin" that have polar opposite alternate meanings, and (for advanced practitioners) words such as "formicate" that sound a bit rude, but are perfectly decent.

Then we use code words that are guaranteed to be unknown overseas, even to most English teachers there. Astroturfing, flabbergasted, flummoxed, discombobulated, and so on.

I think this one wafted over from Canada around 25 years ago: While working on an ultrasound system it turned out that the pulsers didn't like CW operation. Phhht ... hissss .... *BAM* ... ooops. A guy from the German branch came in. "Let's try CW, shall we? Is this system ok?" ..."No, it's completely hosed" ... "It's WHAT?"

Try Finnish: järjestelmällistämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän

No clue what it means, has something to do with "system" or "organization", I think. We have a couple of ladies at church who occasionally speak Finnish to each other. Totally unintelligible to me.

Pizza topping, plaque, and tongue-coating -- I can see the connection there. In fact, depending on where you get the pizza, it's even a causal one and perhaps even sorted in chronological order (particularly if too much beer is involved).

But road surfaces? Where _do_ you guys get your pizza toppings?

Probably useful for marathon Scrabble (TM) tournaments during the long winter evenings up there...

Hosed != Hoser, and "hoser" is not very Canadian.

I like the siphoning prairie farmer and losing team hockey rink etymologies.. the broken meaning seems to be a bit more obvious. = FUBAR.

--sp

My astonishment, on my first Germany trip, was all that fa(h)rting everywhere you looked, some street sign or door: ***fahrt >:-} ...Jim Thompson

I did think that "Ausfahrt" must be an ENORMOUS city-- as I drove past exit after exit so marked...

der to

eded?

Danish is similar to german, some of the words are in the dictionary but not all, as long as it makes sense you can just keep adding words

and it is an error to not write a compound as one word

-Lasse

Both. Isn't practical?

The electric candidate is: Dreiphasenwechselstromkilowattstundenmesser, three phase alternating current kilowatt-hour meter.

The same beast exists in Finnish: kolmivaihevaihtovirtakilowattituntimittari.

lag"

eth,

gs too.

in Danish "fart" means speed or travel, so pretty much all tourist busses from Denmark says "touristfart" on the side

the funny one is that the word for married and poison is the same "gift"

-Lasse

too.

Growing up in Vancouver, it was generally accepted that the hose in question was standard equipment for males.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Sounds like what I said when I touched the wrong lead on the three-phase panel. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

too.

I don't think I heard "hoser" until the SCTV skits.

In HS there was also the term "hosebag", referring to a lady of dubious virtue. Which fits with the FUBAR/hosed pairing.

--sp