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It is literally what I love about the English language. You can easily generate new words that are easily understood. In the same thought, it's completely unn
by DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
It is literally what I love about the English language. You can easily generate new words that are easily understood.
In the same thought, it's completely unnecessary.
- gnulinux 8y agoHmm what do you mean by English language? I cannot think of a language that wouldn't let this (maybe a very analytic language, like Mandarin?). This is probably a universal property of human languages.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- codyb 8y agoI don't speak German but I've always had the impression they love mashing words together to make super long but informative words.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoYes, that's a thing they do in German. Instead of post office it would be postoffice. Instead of train station it would be trainstation. (Only in German, obviously.) Not exactly what's being described above though.
- toxik 8y agoPeople always go ”oh those crazy German words” when in reality all Nordic countries do this, and I’d bet at least Dutch too.
- edejong 8y agoWe do this a lot! Woordsamenvoegsmania! (The mania of connecting words)
- rypskar 8y agoAt least in Norwegian the general rule is: if it is one thing, it is one word. Is sad to see how the English rules influence how many write now. Auto-correct end "spelling-checkers" are often terrible at this, and many think if MS Word or Google say it should be written a way it is the correct way
- natch 8y agoI have to say, Mandarin is the absolute best at this. One of my favorites is the fact that the word for precedent is simply the character for "first" followed by the character for "example." So simple and straightforward. Even as a non-native speaker, once you get the hang of it you can just glue words together and often hit on the right compound word for some vocabulary you haven't ever studied. And also make mistakes... of course.