5 ms·

So is it a bit like "weekend" or "website" in the sense that those were originally two separate words that were combined enough to create a convention that they

• ahje 7y ago
  Yes.
• arghwhat 7y ago
  That is an entirely different concept from compound words such as "flyskam", which is simply how "fly" and "skam" are to be written to convey this meaning. "Jeg har flyskam" means "I have flight/airplane shame" (i.e. shame due to flying), but "Jeg har fly skam" would mean "I have shame that is flight", which is nonsense. A better example of the meaning imposed by compounding would be "En dansklærer", which in verbose translation means "A teacher of the Danish language", as opposed to "En dansk lærer", meaning "A teacher who is Danish". We can also combine them, with "En dansk dansklærer" meaning "A teacher of the Danish language who is Danish". "Weekend", on the other hand, is a word on its own after having morphed over time into its own entity, and even adopted unchanged into Nordic languages (apart from local pronunciation, of course). That several words morph into a single, new and unique word is not uncommon, although usually with greater change than just a lost white space.
  • ProxCoques 7y ago
    Ah, I see. Interesting!