logoalt Hacker News

ben_wtoday at 11:33 AM2 repliesview on HN

> Adding two words together creates a new and different concept. The permutations necessary to represent every concept ever formed by combining two or more different words would be endless.

May I introduce you to the German language?

We have "gesundheitszeugnis" (health certificate) and "bärenstark" (strong as a bear), and of course "[der] Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" ([the] Danube Steamship Navigation Company Captain) and "[Das] Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" ([the] cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law).


Replies

michaeld123today at 1:29 PM

Added a German/Norwegian section — but vidarh corrected me below: German doesn't 'remove the space,' the compound never had one. Adding a space changes the meaning or breaks the grammar. The article now reflects that.

show 1 reply
account42today at 11:50 AM

And we don't expect dictionaries to contain every compound word you could come up with in German either.

show 1 reply