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> Most names should be Teutonic, following the spirit of languages like Norwegian, rather than the elliptical vagueness of Romance languages like English. Norwe
by Camillo 10y ago
> Most names should be Teutonic, following the spirit of languages like Norwegian, rather than the elliptical vagueness of Romance languages like English. Norwegian has more words like tannlege (literally "tooth doctor") and sykehus (literally "sick house"), and fewer words like dentist and hospital (which don't break down into other English words, and are thus confusing unless you already know their meaning).
Not only is this vaguely racist; it's also wrong, which is worse.
- English is, in fact, a Germanic language.
- Using more specific words (and English has lots of words) is the opposite of vagueness. A "sick house" could be a house that contains sick people, a house that is sick itself (rotten beams?), a noble family ("house") whose fortunes have turned, etc. A "hospital" is, unambiguously, a facility where the sick are given professional care. Of course, in a different timeline "sickhouse" could have been the word for "hospital", but then it would have been a word of its own, taking up the same amount of space in your mental dictionary as "hospital" does.
- Romance languages are, arguably, less vague even in their grammar. You know that thing where you just jam two words together and call it a day? You see very little of that in Romance languages. Instead, you put a preposition in there, which forces you to be more specific about the exact way in which the two things are related.
- Of course, a "Teutonic" fan would then say that this is a problem with Romance language, and the ability to jam words together is what makes a language truly rich. (Because it's easier to form new words? In which case, see item 2.) And sure, it's ok to have preferences. But if you're going to be a Grammar Nazi, or a literal Nazi, you better have a clue what you're talking about.
- rmk2 10y agoWhat he means, but phases poorly, is to use compounds. On your other point, at least German is very specific with how compounds work grammatically, namely that they follow a head-right principle which defines genus and declination and which essentially relegates everything left of the head to the status of further defining the head. Additionally, none of your examples work in German for the term "Krankenhaus" (sick house/hospital) for that very reason: a sick house (a house in disrepair) would have to be a krankes Haus following general rules of declension, which would also be the grammatically correct (though completely non-idiomatic) version for a fallen noble house. And while there is a very specific way that defines how stems of a compound are related, German can mark grammatical units differently from English (and akin to Latin) by requiring the agreement of case/numerus/genus between say an adjective and a noun, specifically making it grammatically impossible for krankes Haus to be understood as hospital or Krankenhaus to be understood as a dilapidated house. edit: the above holds true for Norwegian and Danish as well, by the way.