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"Funkzellenabfrage" - That's a great word. Is there a word describing the ability of the German language to condense English phrases into a single word? :)
by chosenbreed37 8y ago
"Funkzellenabfrage" - That's a great word. Is there a word describing the ability of the German language to condense English phrases into a single word? :)
- zimpenfish 8y agoI think this would come under "agglutination"[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutination
- pas 8y agoGerman is considered an inflective language, because it uses just one suffix for words, and that suffix has many-many variants to express the required grammatical meaning (singular/plural, modality, subject/object, dative/accusative, genitive, etc.) Agglutinative languages just jam everything after the word in small morphemes. (And some, just to be sure, has a few variants of each of those, to match vowel kinds and such.)
- sshanky 8y agoOne of my favorites was "Vorlesungsverzeichnis" (lecture directory/course catalog). Vorlesung = lecture - Lesung = a reading (like a book reading)/lesson - add "Vor" ("before" as in "in front of [a group]") and it becomes Lecture Verzeichnis = directory - Zeichnis = symbol, signal, reference, sign - add "Ver" (hard to really explain what it does) and it becomes directory, index, register, list
- piquadrat 8y agoBandwurmwort (https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bandwurmwort https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bandwurmwort) "tapeworm word" in English. Basically, they are compound words.
- maweki 8y agoThe literal translation is just "radio cell query". But it's a very catchy word :D