A language learners’ forum

I came across this one my daughter's children's book "Heute ist Lucy Piratin" last night:

Himbeermarmeladenhandelsschiff

Any others?

Hashimi wrote:These are three or four words, not one.

Maybe in English, in German it's one.

@Patrick: I have another one for you: Traumzauberbaum.


You daughter might enjoy this if she doesn't know it yet. It's a beautiful collection of stories and songs for kids.

PS: There's probably one "n" to many in your Himbeermarmelandenhandelsschiff. In German you could say "der Fehlerteufel war am Werk".

Die neugierige kleine Hexe had a lovely Raketenbesen, which probably isn’t an Anki word.

German is kind of cheating though.

Die Sendung mit der Maus taught me all about the wonderful Gleisschotterbettungsreinigungsmaschine

Kat wrote:

Hashimi wrote:These are three or four words, not one.

Maybe in English, in German it's one.

I don't know of any meaningful definition of "word" that would count "raspberry jam trade ship" as being a different number of words to "Himbeermarmeladenhandelsschiff". The fact that we don't write Raspberryjamtradeship (or maybe we could use Hungarian conventions and write rasberryjam-tradeship?) is just an arbitrary writing convention.

Saim wrote:
I don't know of any meaningful definition of "word" that would count "raspberry jam trade ship" as being a different number of words to "Himbeermarmeladenhandelsschiff". The fact that we don't write Raspberryjamtradeship (or maybe we could use Hungarian conventions and write rasberryjam-tradeship?) is just an arbitrary writing convention.

Killjoy

Saim wrote:I don't know of any meaningful definition of "word" that would count "raspberry jam trade ship" as being a different number of words to "Himbeermarmeladenhandelsschiff".

I'm confused.
Are you saying that you'd count "raspberry jam trade ship" as one word? If so, what do you call the four different parts it's made up of?

Saim wrote:

Kat wrote:

Hashimi wrote:These are three or four words, not one.

Maybe in English, in German it's one.

I don't know of any meaningful definition of "word" that would count "raspberry jam trade ship" as being a different number of words to "Himbeermarmeladenhandelsschiff". The fact that we don't write Raspberryjamtradeship (or maybe we could use Hungarian conventions and write rasberryjam-tradeship?) is just an arbitrary writing convention.

Like everything else about language is just an arbritrary convention.
Yet we understand that in English it is 4 words and in German it is a single word.
Because that is the conventional definition of what a word is.

a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

zenmonkey wrote:a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and shown with a space on either side when written or printed.

I don't think having a space is the critical point, at least not for compound words in English (e.g,, "water tank", "dry cleaning", take out", "driving licence", "printer cartridge", "public speaking").

Of course there are lots of compound words in English without spaces: bedroom; motorcycle; haircut; lookout; drawback; onlooker; bystander; greenhouse; software; redhead; output; overthrow; upturn; input.

Perhaps the space takes a while to be removed. "Electronic mail" becomes "e-mail" becomes "email".

Saim wrote:I don't know of any meaningful definition of "word" that would count "raspberry jam trade ship" as being a different number of words to "Himbeermarmeladenhandelsschiff". The fact that we don't write Raspberryjamtradeship (or maybe we could use Hungarian conventions and write rasberryjam-tradeship?) is just an arbitrary writing convention.

But grammatically it's one word, which is more important in German than English with it's various cases and genders. Just considering gender it is:

die Erdbeere
die Marmelade
der Handel
das Schiff

BUT only Das Himbeermarmeladenhandelsschiff

While this is a sort of silly example there are lots of compound words that can't be so easily separated. "Doghouse" in English is neither really a house or a dog. "Glühbirne" in German is not a glowing pear, but a lightbulb.