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The name "Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu" translates roughly as "The summit where Tamatea, the man wi
by aldoushuxley001 8y ago
The name "Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu" translates roughly as "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one".
So this hill is more of a run-on sentence than a noun
- olliej 8y agoIt's much like some of the long german words which are literally just a series of concatenated words. I assume that 1000s of years ago german and maori students were struggling to get essays completed under some unreasonably tight word limit. This was their solution, and the subsequently buried the evidence.
- aldoushuxley001 8y agoI think that's a reasonable assumption.
- Doxin 8y agoThe word you're looking for is "compound words". English has a couple too -- i.e. bedtime, nowadays, etc -- but in english it's generally considered poor grammar to invent your own while in languages like dutch and german it's mandatory. That said the longer ones tend to be never used, in dutch "tafeltennistafelfabrikantenvereniging" is a popular example translating to "table tennis table manufacturers meeting", but you'll be hard pressed for a situation where that word is called for!
- aldoushuxley001 8y agoI always wondered how to actually type out nowadays... all those spellcheckers had me convinced it was now days with a lil mumbling in between.