4 ms·

Yeah, if "boiling water" is one word, what about boiling sugar? Boiling milk? Boiling volcano? Boiling soup? Adding two words together creates a new and differ

Yeah, if "boiling water" is one word, what about boiling sugar? Boiling milk? Boiling volcano? Boiling soup? Adding two words together creates a new and different concept. The permutations necessary to represent every concept ever formed by combining two or more different words would be endless. Some of them on the list, like black hole, do make sense. That's a very distinct thing. It's not a hole in the conventional sense and it's not really black. Boiling water, though, is water. And it's boiling.

ben_w 8mo ago
> Adding two words together creates a new and different concept. The permutations necessary to represent every concept ever formed by combining two or more different words would be endless. May I introduce you to the German language? We have "gesundheitszeugnis" (health certificate) and "bärenstark" (strong as a bear), and of course "[der] Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" ([the] Danube Steamship Navigation Company Captain) and "[Das] Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" ([the] cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law).
- account42 8mo ago
  And we don't expect dictionaries to contain every compound word you could come up with in German either.
  - ben_w 8mo ago
    Not the ones that someone could come up with, just the ones people do use.
    - netsharc 8mo ago
      Your examples are ridiculous though.. The meaning of "[G]esundheitszeugnis" can be derived if you understand the 2 words. Meanwhile, a Bahnhof would be a "Yard/square of lanes" if one didn't get taught that it's "train station". Although I suppose anyone learning German will quickly learn that "Bahn" is something to do with trains. Unless it's Autobahn. Or Schwimmbahn.
      - ben_w 8mo ago
        Why are they ridiculous? Words that get used, get used, the etymology is a curiosity to most. In English, we use "computer" even though it used to be a job title. Native English speakers freely use "rucksack" even though it was stolen from German and even though "backpack" is also available, without the space, as a compound English word for a pack worn on the back. English/German has "briefcase"/"Briefkasten" to describe a box that letters go in, it's just that the former is for transporting letters and the latter is for receiving them.
- michaeld123 8mo ago
  Added a German/Norwegian section — but vidarh corrected me below: German doesn't 'remove the space,' the compound never had one. Adding a space changes the meaning or breaks the grammar. The article now reflects that.
  - vidarh 8mo ago
    The issue with German as well as Norwegian is that a space creates a semantically distinct structure, so it's not that they remove the space, but that one wasn't there in the first place, and some of those compounds then become important enough for the dictionary. Absolutely not all - there's a near unbounded set of possible compounds. In Norwegian, we in fact have a compound for the incorrect separation of compounds: "orddelingsfeil" (word separation error). Actually, we have two - technically it's "særskrivingsfeil" (separate writing error), but "orddelingsfeil" is more common... We take this seriously. The problem is that while some are definitely wrong, others change meaning. E.g. "en norsk lærer" means "a Norwegian teacher" but "en norsklærer" means "a teacher of the subject Norwegian". There's an infinite set of possible -lærer compounds: If you create a new subject then a teacher of that subject is a <subject>lærer. Obviously they can't all go in the dictionary. Some other examples: "Røyk fritt" means "smoke freely" while "røykfritt" means "smokefree". "Steke ovn", means "to fry an oven", while "stekeovn" means "oven". These two belong in the dictionary because they are so common and that though technically you can use "ovn" and "fri"/"fritt" to form a near infinite number of other common forms as well, in practice the number of common forms that use them is quite limited. The key part is that most compounds in languages like German or Norwegian will only have one valid way of writing them. Add spaces, and you usually end up with something ungrammatical or with an entirely different meaning. Whereas in English whether or not a word can be written with a space, with a hyphen, or combined much more often changes over time, and can differ in different places at different times, as the <separate words> -> <hyphenated> -> <compound> pipeline in English is slow and arbitrary and not necessarily reflecting a change in meaning.
    - michaeld123 8mo ago
      I just adapted your comments into the paragraph starting with "German". Hopefully accurately.
vidarh 8mo ago
[To be clear, the below is me agreeing with you] Norwegian is almost as compound-happy as German, and we could've filled many volumes with compounds. But what generally happens for one of the compunds to enter the dictionary is that the compound needs to have a meaning that is non-obvious from the individual parts, at least to some people, and typically that the compound has a non-obvious meaning if interpreted as two separate words. E.g. "akterutseilt" is an example. "Akterut" means behind, aft. "Seilt" means sailed. "Behind sailed" helps as a way to remember it, but it's not obvious whether it's strictly a sailing term, or means that you've been left behind or have left someone else behind. In this case if you say someone has been akterutseilt, it means they've been metaphorically left behind, often by their own failure to keep up. Those kinds of compounds deserve dictionary entries whether they are actually written in two words or one, because they function as a single unit however it is written. I think black hole is a perfect example in English. And in fact, this is a compound that is written in two words in Norwegian as well, but is in Norwegian dictionaries despite that[1] as "svart hull". [1] https://ordbokene.no/bm/svart%20hull https://ordbokene.no/bm/svart%20hull
- michaeld123 8mo ago
  Great example — I added svart hull to the article as an illustration of a language that writes it as two words but still puts it in the dictionary because the meaning isn't obvious from the parts. That's exactly the instinct English lacks.
- Skeime 8mo ago
  Fun fact: I looked this up in the online version of the Duden (the predominant German dictionary). It does have an entry "Black Hole" (so the English term!) but not for "schwarzes Loch", which is the normal German term for it. (In the printed versions, you might need to go to the Universalwörterbuch or so to find the English entry, it might not be in the normal "Die deutsche Rechtschreibung"; I have not checked.)
  - vidarh 8mo ago
    > Duden Just the name gives me flashbacks to German-lessons in highschool.
traveler1 8mo ago
Boiling point?
Beijinger 8mo ago
Boiling water is not a word. The phrase contains two words. While German has no word for "boiling water", it uses two words too, an adjective and a noun, the German language has the principle of composite words. As a consequence, there is an infinite amount of German words. "Hackernewsleser" would be a word I just made up but every German can understand. A reader of Hackernews. Obviously this makes a dictionary tricky. And it has been a big problem for spell corrections in early MS Word Software.
- OoooooooO 8mo ago
  I would write it Hackernews-Leser for better readability but both goes.
  - vivid242 8mo ago
    It would be wrong, though.
- RGamma 8mo ago
  Kochendwasser exists but is rarely used (and wouldn't need to occur in a dictionary because its meaning is obvious from its parts).
seanhunter 8mo ago
Agree. “boiling water” is such a staggeringly terrible example for TFA to have opened with. “Honey, I’ve overheated the fondue! The problem is I can’t describe the liquid because English completely lacks any word that might be apposite in this situation other than the newly-minted ‘boiling water’.” “It’s a problem. Maybe you could call it ‘boiling water that happens to be quite cheesy’. It’s not great, but it’s the best we can do.”

ben_w 8mo ago

> Adding two words together creates a new and different concept. The permutations necessary to represent every concept ever formed by combining two or more different words would be endless. May I introduce you to the German language? We have "gesundheitszeugnis" (health certificate) and "bärenstark" (strong as a bear), and of course "[der] Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" ([the] Danube Steamship Navigation Company Captain) and "[Das] Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" ([the] cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law).

account42 8mo ago
And we don't expect dictionaries to contain every compound word you could come up with in German either.
- ben_w 8mo ago
  Not the ones that someone could come up with, just the ones people do use.
  - netsharc 8mo ago
    Your examples are ridiculous though.. The meaning of "[G]esundheitszeugnis" can be derived if you understand the 2 words. Meanwhile, a Bahnhof would be a "Yard/square of lanes" if one didn't get taught that it's "train station". Although I suppose anyone learning German will quickly learn that "Bahn" is something to do with trains. Unless it's Autobahn. Or Schwimmbahn.
    - ben_w 8mo ago
      Why are they ridiculous? Words that get used, get used, the etymology is a curiosity to most. In English, we use "computer" even though it used to be a job title. Native English speakers freely use "rucksack" even though it was stolen from German and even though "backpack" is also available, without the space, as a compound English word for a pack worn on the back. English/German has "briefcase"/"Briefkasten" to describe a box that letters go in, it's just that the former is for transporting letters and the latter is for receiving them.
michaeld123 8mo ago
Added a German/Norwegian section — but vidarh corrected me below: German doesn't 'remove the space,' the compound never had one. Adding a space changes the meaning or breaks the grammar. The article now reflects that.
- vidarh 8mo ago
  The issue with German as well as Norwegian is that a space creates a semantically distinct structure, so it's not that they remove the space, but that one wasn't there in the first place, and some of those compounds then become important enough for the dictionary. Absolutely not all - there's a near unbounded set of possible compounds. In Norwegian, we in fact have a compound for the incorrect separation of compounds: "orddelingsfeil" (word separation error). Actually, we have two - technically it's "særskrivingsfeil" (separate writing error), but "orddelingsfeil" is more common... We take this seriously. The problem is that while some are definitely wrong, others change meaning. E.g. "en norsk lærer" means "a Norwegian teacher" but "en norsklærer" means "a teacher of the subject Norwegian". There's an infinite set of possible -lærer compounds: If you create a new subject then a teacher of that subject is a <subject>lærer. Obviously they can't all go in the dictionary. Some other examples: "Røyk fritt" means "smoke freely" while "røykfritt" means "smokefree". "Steke ovn", means "to fry an oven", while "stekeovn" means "oven". These two belong in the dictionary because they are so common and that though technically you can use "ovn" and "fri"/"fritt" to form a near infinite number of other common forms as well, in practice the number of common forms that use them is quite limited. The key part is that most compounds in languages like German or Norwegian will only have one valid way of writing them. Add spaces, and you usually end up with something ungrammatical or with an entirely different meaning. Whereas in English whether or not a word can be written with a space, with a hyphen, or combined much more often changes over time, and can differ in different places at different times, as the <separate words> -> <hyphenated> -> <compound> pipeline in English is slow and arbitrary and not necessarily reflecting a change in meaning.
  - michaeld123 8mo ago
    I just adapted your comments into the paragraph starting with "German". Hopefully accurately.

vidarh 8mo ago

[To be clear, the below is me agreeing with you] Norwegian is almost as compound-happy as German, and we could've filled many volumes with compounds. But what generally happens for one of the compunds to enter the dictionary is that the compound needs to have a meaning that is non-obvious from the individual parts, at least to some people, and typically that the compound has a non-obvious meaning if interpreted as two separate words. E.g. "akterutseilt" is an example. "Akterut" means behind, aft. "Seilt" means sailed. "Behind sailed" helps as a way to remember it, but it's not obvious whether it's strictly a sailing term, or means that you've been left behind or have left someone else behind. In this case if you say someone has been akterutseilt, it means they've been metaphorically left behind, often by their own failure to keep up. Those kinds of compounds deserve dictionary entries whether they are actually written in two words or one, because they function as a single unit however it is written. I think black hole is a perfect example in English. And in fact, this is a compound that is written in two words in Norwegian as well, but is in Norwegian dictionaries despite that[1] as "svart hull". [1] https://ordbokene.no/bm/svart%20hull https://ordbokene.no/bm/svart%20hull

michaeld123 8mo ago
Great example — I added svart hull to the article as an illustration of a language that writes it as two words but still puts it in the dictionary because the meaning isn't obvious from the parts. That's exactly the instinct English lacks.
Skeime 8mo ago
Fun fact: I looked this up in the online version of the Duden (the predominant German dictionary). It does have an entry "Black Hole" (so the English term!) but not for "schwarzes Loch", which is the normal German term for it. (In the printed versions, you might need to go to the Universalwörterbuch or so to find the English entry, it might not be in the normal "Die deutsche Rechtschreibung"; I have not checked.)
- vidarh 8mo ago
  > Duden Just the name gives me flashbacks to German-lessons in highschool.

traveler1 8mo ago

Boiling point?

Beijinger 8mo ago

Boiling water is not a word. The phrase contains two words. While German has no word for "boiling water", it uses two words too, an adjective and a noun, the German language has the principle of composite words. As a consequence, there is an infinite amount of German words. "Hackernewsleser" would be a word I just made up but every German can understand. A reader of Hackernews. Obviously this makes a dictionary tricky. And it has been a big problem for spell corrections in early MS Word Software.

OoooooooO 8mo ago
I would write it Hackernews-Leser for better readability but both goes.
- vivid242 8mo ago
  It would be wrong, though.
RGamma 8mo ago
Kochendwasser exists but is rarely used (and wouldn't need to occur in a dictionary because its meaning is obvious from its parts).

seanhunter 8mo ago

Agree. “boiling water” is such a staggeringly terrible example for TFA to have opened with. “Honey, I’ve overheated the fondue! The problem is I can’t describe the liquid because English completely lacks any word that might be apposite in this situation other than the newly-minted ‘boiling water’.” “It’s a problem. Maybe you could call it ‘boiling water that happens to be quite cheesy’. It’s not great, but it’s the best we can do.”