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> very long words, hyphenation important Oh don’t worry I prefer words like “Kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedencomitéleden” to be one thing so I
by chronogram 8y ago
> very long words, hyphenation important
Oh don’t worry I prefer words like “Kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedencomitéleden” to be one thing so I can just gloss over the blob. Only have to read the blob once to recognise the shape and know what it refers to. With hyphenation it’s a different blob every time, so then I might spend time reading 60 letters.
Hyphenation is for newspapers, where space is money.
- int_19h 8y agoOn a small screen - say, smartphone - it might not be an option.
- Tomte 8y agoIf you want to skip over the blob, sure. But if you want to read it, hyphenation makes it much easier. Because your claim that there would be a "different blob every time" is not false, but misleading. There are different blobs, but they are all ones that can berecognized by shape. Because such long words would certainly be split up between their constituent words, not between random places. This actually makes a hyphenated composite word easier to read than the very long non-hyphenated form.
- chronogram 8y agoYes I see where you’re coming from if you want to read the blobs, but I cannot recall a situation where I wanted to read them more than once. Not in Dutch or German, so I do really appreciate the lack of hyphenation when reading those languages (on my phone screen especially). Maybe you do get into those situations?
- Tomte 8y agoArwe you really saying that words above a certain length don't interest you when reading an article with that word? And what is the "more than once" thing supposed to mean? Hyphenation helps the first time, too.
- misnome 8y agoI think they are referring to the way many (most?) people read most words - recognising the shape rather than reading the individual letters. Presumably if your language contains several common and unique long words you quickly start to recognise the shape and so no longer need to read the letters.
- Tomte 8y agoYes, I understood that. But the hyphenated parts are also words (if you're hyphenating intelligently), so you recognize their shapes just as well, probably even better.
- bhaak 8y ago> Because such long words would certainly be split up between their constituent words, not between random places. At least for German, this is not a requirement. Hyphenation doesn't happen at random places but at syllable boundaries. The only care that you should place up hyphenation is that it shouldn't lead to possible misreadings. "Ur-in-stinkt" being the classic example. Only split that word at the first, never at the second possible hyphen.
- Tomte 8y agoIt is not a requirement, but you would generally do that. Hafen-meister instead of Ha-fenmeister.