4 ms·

Difficult to find a word for 'snow globe' too ..

by lwhi 4y ago

ithkuil 4y ago
This is an artefact of how Germanic languages can often just glue words together without explicit connective words "Sfera di neve" doesn't like a word whole "snow globe" does and indeed some write it as "snowglobe"
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  That's not especially distinctive of Germanic languages. Chinese will do it exactly the same way, though the chains of nouns that are common in Germanic would be unusual to say the least in Chinese. But gluing words together without explicit connections is common pretty much everywhere. Compare Greek, which freely forms adjectives that way, or Latin sanguisuga "bloodsuck[er]" (leech) or lucifer "light-bear[er]" (light-bearer).
  - ithkuil 4y ago
    it can be done in romance languages such as italian, but it's way more frequent that one word has to be a verb and another a noun: sanguisuga (blood sucker), magiafuoco (fire eater), porta tagliafuoco (fire resistent door), apri-pista, or noun+adjective: cassaforte (strong box, safe) or preposition+noun: oltretomba (beyond the grave, after life) There are cases like noun+noun but they are rare and they are not productive, i.e. I cannot make one up. Pescecane (fish dog, i.e. a shark) is ok, but you cannot "sferaneve" for a snowball Probably the reason is that the two nouns have to have a special relation for it to work, i.e. one word has to act as an adjective, it has to qualify the first word somehow. The shark is a fish, but is a fish that bites like a dog, hence it's a fishdog a pescecane. Similarly "casa madre", for headquarters, it's not a house of the mother ("case della madre") but it's a special kind of house that has the quality of "gatherhing the whole family together like if in the case of a real family"
  - naniwaduni 4y ago
    Chinese has quite nearly the opposite problem: compounds are so pervasive that they'll think any disyllable is a compound, identifiable morphemes or no, even if it's a phonetic loan.

Difficult to find a word for 'snow globe' too ..

by lwhi 4y ago

Difficult to find a word for 'snow globe' too ..

This is an artefact of how Germanic languages can often just glue words together without explicit connective words "Sfera di neve" doesn't like a word whole "snow globe" does and indeed some write it as "snowglobe"

thaumasiotes 4y ago
That's not especially distinctive of Germanic languages. Chinese will do it exactly the same way, though the chains of nouns that are common in Germanic would be unusual to say the least in Chinese. But gluing words together without explicit connections is common pretty much everywhere. Compare Greek, which freely forms adjectives that way, or Latin sanguisuga "bloodsuck[er]" (leech) or lucifer "light-bear[er]" (light-bearer).
- ithkuil 4y ago
  it can be done in romance languages such as italian, but it's way more frequent that one word has to be a verb and another a noun: sanguisuga (blood sucker), magiafuoco (fire eater), porta tagliafuoco (fire resistent door), apri-pista, or noun+adjective: cassaforte (strong box, safe) or preposition+noun: oltretomba (beyond the grave, after life) There are cases like noun+noun but they are rare and they are not productive, i.e. I cannot make one up. Pescecane (fish dog, i.e. a shark) is ok, but you cannot "sferaneve" for a snowball Probably the reason is that the two nouns have to have a special relation for it to work, i.e. one word has to act as an adjective, it has to qualify the first word somehow. The shark is a fish, but is a fish that bites like a dog, hence it's a fishdog a pescecane. Similarly "casa madre", for headquarters, it's not a house of the mother ("case della madre") but it's a special kind of house that has the quality of "gatherhing the whole family together like if in the case of a real family"
- naniwaduni 4y ago
  Chinese has quite nearly the opposite problem: compounds are so pervasive that they'll think any disyllable is a compound, identifiable morphemes or no, even if it's a phonetic loan.