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The compositional powers of German, Dutch and plenty of other languages are really amazing. People invent words on the fly and promptly forget immediately after

The compositional powers of German, Dutch and plenty of other languages are really amazing. People invent words on the fly and promptly forget immediately after and the listener just understands what has been said. In my Dutch native language, we had the word "pausbaar" (which means something like "in possession of the necessary properties to become pope) coming up recently.

dmichulke 1y ago
Ahhh, the recurring themes of popeability and pope-worthiness.
melvinroest 1y ago
Ah, I read "pausbaar" as the "ability to pause" since "pauzebaar" would be odd to say :')
- toolslive 1y ago
  if you want to build "ability to be paused" you would end up with "pauzeerbaar" from "pauzeren" (to pause)
  - melvinroest 1y ago
    ah yea, fair
hanshenning 1y ago
In some languages there is an actual word for this in the dictionary: papabile https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/papabile https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/papabile
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  This word is widely known in English too, at least among people who follow papal elections. I’m not sure whether it’d count as “an English word originally loaned from Italian” (like “pasta”) or “an Italian word that a lot of English-speakers recognize” (like “buongiorno”), but it is there — probably somewhere in between those two extremes.
- culebron21 1y ago
  Russian speakers can produce the same, basically its cognate, папабельный (papabelniy), using the borrowed suffix -bel- (same as -bile), and Russian suffix -n- (passive voice maybe), plus the ending. Examlpe of pure Russian word: смотрибельный (smotribelniy) = watcheable. Root smotr- (Slavic root, "to watch") + suffix -bel-, + -n- + gender ending. I bet the German -bar suffix and Latin -bil- are cognates.
toolslive 1y ago
also, I've noticed that French and Spanish speaking people have problems trying to perform the composition: "XY" and "YX" will end up meaning completely different things. fe DataRequest fe RequestData.

dmichulke 1y ago

Ahhh, the recurring themes of popeability and pope-worthiness.

melvinroest 1y ago

Ah, I read "pausbaar" as the "ability to pause" since "pauzebaar" would be odd to say :')

toolslive 1y ago
if you want to build "ability to be paused" you would end up with "pauzeerbaar" from "pauzeren" (to pause)
- melvinroest 1y ago
  ah yea, fair

hanshenning 1y ago

In some languages there is an actual word for this in the dictionary: papabile https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/papabile https://de.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/papabile

School-Cotton 1y ago
This word is widely known in English too, at least among people who follow papal elections. I’m not sure whether it’d count as “an English word originally loaned from Italian” (like “pasta”) or “an Italian word that a lot of English-speakers recognize” (like “buongiorno”), but it is there — probably somewhere in between those two extremes.
culebron21 1y ago
Russian speakers can produce the same, basically its cognate, папабельный (papabelniy), using the borrowed suffix -bel- (same as -bile), and Russian suffix -n- (passive voice maybe), plus the ending. Examlpe of pure Russian word: смотрибельный (smotribelniy) = watcheable. Root smotr- (Slavic root, "to watch") + suffix -bel-, + -n- + gender ending. I bet the German -bar suffix and Latin -bil- are cognates.

toolslive 1y ago

also, I've noticed that French and Spanish speaking people have problems trying to perform the composition: "XY" and "YX" will end up meaning completely different things. fe DataRequest fe RequestData.