# Compound words in Germanic languages



## Nino83

Hello everyone.
I'm reading some pages of a comic work written by Mark Twain where he says: "An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of *compound words constructed by the writer* on the spot, and *not to be found in any dictionary* -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens;"

He's exaggerating, obviously, but, just for curiosity, I've read the first page of spiegel.de in order to have a look and I found, for example,  "Bundesanwaltschaft"  which should mean (I'm not sure) Attorney General, then I googled and I've found this "disambiguation" page on Wikipedia where I've found these links: den deutschen *Bundesdisziplinaranwalt*, den deutschen *Bundeswehrdisziplinaranwalt *beim *Bundesverwaltungsgericht*, den deutschen *Generalbundesanwalt* beim *Bundesgerichtshof*, den deutschen Vertreter des *Bundesinteresses* beim *Bundesverwaltungsgericht*, ehemals *Oberbundesanwalt*, die Schweizerische *Bundesanwaltschaft*.
I was frightened of opening one of those links, because I could have probably met some longer words (it seems that page after page these words were getting longer).

Here, another example:  Fussbodenschleifmaschinenverleih 

Joking apart, I'm wondering why in the other Germanic languages you don't use the same English construction (attributive noun or noun adjunct), writing these words separately.
For example: _English football team coach, guitar amplifier manufacturers, a three-bedroom house, two three-car garages_, and so on.

I've read, for example, that Germans use different cases: "Tag*es*licht (day + light) and Tag*e*buch (day + book = diary), but also Tagtraum which combines two words (Tag + Traum day + dream) using no connector."

Thank you


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## ahvalj

An introductory note. The written history of most Germanic languages goes back to the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd millennia, when the English-type constructions were either still impossible (due to the preservation of case endings in separate words and stem vowels in the non-final elements of compounds) or were just emerging and probably perceived as not appropriate for such an elevated thing as writing. You won't find them in considerable amounts in Old English either. So, I guess _one of_ or probably _the_ major reason is that modern English is just grammatically and psychologically the most derived Germanic language.


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## Mori.cze

Just a remark: to huge extent this is just a question of orthography, which in turn is just a question of tradition. I do not believe there is much grammatical difference between e.g. English self-service and German Selbstbedienung, though the latter is written as one long and scary word.


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## Nino83

This is what I thought.
They are just nouns, both in English and in German.
The difference is that when you read a German compound word, it's possible that you can't find it on a dictionary, while if it were written separately, it would be easier to find it.


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## ahvalj

I agree and it is what I tried to say: the tradition of writing began when the compound words and the Genitive constructions were the only ways to express such things. The constructions of the modern English type arose later, when some principles of orthography in the Germanic languages had already established. English experienced a break in the written tradition that coincided with the shift from a residually inflexional to an analytical language and with a huge influx of Romance words, and since the types _word+s+word_ and _word+connecting_vowel+word_ had disappeared, the new literary tradition could have begun writing the elements separately. This stage is not completely achieved in other languages (especially Swedish preserves words like _kyrk*o*gård_).


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## Mori.cze

Nino83 said:


> ... if it were written separately, it would be easier to find it.


 The self-centered Germans just do not seem to realize the necessity to switch to a foreigner-friendly orthography

(Actually, this rarely poses a problem, most of the times it's easy to guess where to cut the word and for what you need to search the dictionary)


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## Sobakus

What's important is that to a speaker of English, the closest thing to a purely analytic language Europe has to offer, a noun can modify another noun and thus two nouns combined create a valid noun phrase. To a German speaker this is ungrammatical as the German grammar is seen as quite traditional (describable in Latin grammar terms) and structured. So, even though objectively both cases may be the same phenomenon, they're perceived differently by the speaker.


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## ahvalj

You're discussing the wrong thing here. English has reached a stage when one simply joins two words to express a certain thing. Other languages in their present form can't do this because (1) the compounds of the _word+word_ type still represent a subset, (2) the compounds of the _word+(e)s+word_ type are not necessary equal in meaning to _Genitive + word, _(3) the idea that the elements of the compound represent truly separate words is not evident itself, it is the result of the long evolution that English has passed while the other Germanic languages still haven't. So, even if after the atomic war the tradition of literacy in e. g. German begins anew, any serious codifier won't be able to follow the modern English way of writing such constructions, unless German at that stage will have lost its last inflexions.

*P. S. *Cross-post with Sobakus.


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## Nino83

ahvalj said:


> won't be able to follow the modern English way of writing such constructions, unless German at that stage will have lost its last inflexions.



I'm not saying that Germans should write nouns and adjectives without inflections. I'm not an expert of Germanic compound noun formation.
I'd like to ask you if it's possible to write, for example in German, compound words separately, mantaining inflections and the same meaning.


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> I'm not saying that Germans should write nouns and adjectives without inflections. I'm not an expert of Germanic compound noun formation.
> I'd like to ask you if it's possible to write, for example in German, compound words separately, mantaining inflections and the same meaning.


I think this will be only possible when all or almost all the compound words will come to the structure _word+word,_ without _-(e)s-_ and _-e-_ between them (in case of German), otherwise elements of some compounds will have to be written separately and elements of the others together, without clear grammatical reasons. Plus, of course, you can't tell people that since the next year the majority of their vocabulary will be written in a different way to help foreigners to orient in the language.


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## Ben Jamin

ahvalj said:


> You're discussing the wrong thing here. English has reached a stage when one simply joins two words to express a certain thing. Other languages in their present form can't do this because (1) the compounds of the _word+word_ type still represent a subset, (2) the compounds of the _word+(e)s+word_ type are not necessary equal in meaning to _Genitive + word, _(3) the idea that the elements of the compound represent truly separate words is not evident itself, it is the result of the long evolution that English has passed while the other Germanic languages still haven't. So, even if after the atomic war the tradition of literacy in e. g. German begins anew, any serious codifier won't be able to follow the modern English way of writing such constructions, unless German at that stage will have lost its last inflexions.
> 
> *P. S. *Cross-post with Sobakus.


Are you assuming that all languages have the same "development path" and all will follow in the same direction?
(English speakers also assume that the path goes from underdeveloped to most developed, and that English is the leader).


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## ahvalj

Ben Jamin said:


> Are you assuming that all languages have the same "development path" and all will follow in the same direction?
> (English speakers also assume that the path goes from underdeveloped to most developed, and that English is the leader).


The continental Germanic languages are apparently following the same path. Icelandic, if it survives, will not.

"More derived" just means "changed more", it doesn't mean "for better" or "for worse". From my personal taste, the Germanic languages evolve to a completely wrong direction.


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## Mori.cze

ahvalj said:


> So, even if after the atomic war the tradition of literacy in e. g. German begins anew, any serious codifier won't be able to follow the modern English way of writing such constructions, unless German at that stage will have lost its last inflexions.



I do not quite agree. I believe there is no reason (apart from the tradition) why the written form must be (e.g.) Bundesland and not Bundes-Land or even Bundes Land. Declension has IMO nothing to do with that.


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## Nino83

ahvalj said:


> you can't tell people that since the next year the majority of their vocabulary will be written in a different way to help foreigners to orient in the language.



Maybe you've misunderstood my initial question. When I said "I'm wondering why in the other Germanic languages you don't use the same English construction" I was asking you if there were some grammatical obstacles, I never said that Germans *should* write in a different way. Thank you for answering.


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## ahvalj

Mori.cze said:


> I do not quite agree. There is no reason (apart from the tradition) why the written form must be (e.g.) Bundesland and not Bundes-Land or even Bundes Land. Declination has IMO nothing to do with that.


Does German normally allow constructions_ Genitive + word _(_"die Land(e)s Mappe"_)?


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> Maybe you've misunderstood my initial question. When I said "I'm wondering why in the other Germanic languages you don't use the same English construction" I was asking you if there were some grammatical obstacles, I never said that Germans *should* write in a different way. Thank you for answering.


I think such obstacles do exist, both traditional and actual. Hope native speakers will join the discussion.


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## Ben Jamin

In Norwegian the situation is somehow similar to German, but not quite the same. The language is more inflected than English, but less than German. The compound words are produced aggregating mostly nouns, but sometimes also adjectives, adverbs and other parts of speech. They are spelled as one word. There exists a strong trend to write compound words separately, like in English, but it is opposed by people arguing that this leads to confusion, because a compund word has a different meaning than the two parts written separately.  
Example "kylling lever" means "chicked lives (is alive)" (noun + verb). while "kyllinglever" means "chicken liver" (noun + noun), or more precisely (noun [acting as] adjective + noun noun). Two part compund are most common, three part compound are more rare. Four part compounds are frowned at, and five part compound are regarded as monsters. The famous German "Donaudampschiffahrtgsellschaftsbeamter" is practically impossible in Norwegian.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> You're discussing the wrong thing here. English has reached a stage when one simply joins two words to express a certain thing. Other languages in their present form can't do this because (1) the compounds of the _word+word_ type still represent a subset, (2) the compounds of the _word+(e)s+word_ type are not necessary equal in meaning to _Genitive + word, _(3) the idea that the elements of the compound represent truly separate words is not evident itself, it is the result of the long evolution that English has passed while the other Germanic languages still haven't. So, even if after the atomic war the tradition of literacy in e. g. German begins anew, any serious codifier won't be able to follow the modern English way of writing such constructions, unless German at that stage will have lost its last inflexions.


I think you are reading a bit too much in what is essentially little more than an orthographic convention. _Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft _and _Danube Steamboat Shipping Company_ are despite of the loss of _Fugenlauten_ in English prosodically virtually the same and, contrary to Romance languages, English still doesn't need any propositions as glue to be interpretable, _Compagnie de navigation à vapeur du Danube._ Together I find enough to be convinced that these compounds still essentially work like in any other Germanic language.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> I think you are reading a bit too much in what is essentially little more than an orthographic convention. _Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft _and _Danube Steamboat Shipping Company_ are despite of the loss of _Fugenlauten_ in English prosodically virtually the same and, contrary to Romance language, still doesn't need any propositions as glue to be interpretable, _Compagnie de navigation à vapeur du Danube._ Together I find enough to be convinced that these compounds still essentially work like in any other Germanic language.


What then to do with _Tageslicht_ and _Tagebuch_ from Nino's original post?


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> _Donaudampfschi*fff*ahrtsgesellschaft _


Do you allow three letters in a sequence in compounds?


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> What then to do with _Tageslicht_ and _Tagebuch_ from Nino's original post?


The loss of _Fungenlauten _doesn't make _daylight _and _daybook _any less understandable.


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## berndf

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you allow three letters in a sequence in compounds?


Post 1996 orthography. I have got used to it by now.


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> .... They are just nouns, both in English and in German.


In expressions like in your example _guitar amplifier,_ the noun _guitar _has the function of adjective. I.e. the noun preceding an other noun determines it, as there is no formal difference between the nouns and adjectives in English  and the determiner (adjective) always precedes the determined noun. The same happens in Hungarian, so analogous constructions are possible.

But e.g.  in Slavic or Romance, we should have to use a specific adjective from _guitar _in the corresponding gender (e.g. Slovak: _gitárový zosilovač_) or genitival/prepositional constructions (like _amplifier of/for guitars)_.

Now in German _Gitarre Verstärker _(separately) is not "good enough" because _Gitarre_ itself (without any gender marker) is formally not a valid adjective. So either we create an adjective (e.g. _*gitarrischer Verstärker)_ or a compound like  _Gitarrenverstärker_ (traditionally written together), as this possibility is given (unlike e.g.  in Italian or Slovak). The second seems to me a more elegant solution (until the words are not longer than, say, 1-2 meters ).


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## Ihsiin

francisgranada said:


> In expressions like in your example _guitar amplifier,_ the noun _guitar _has the function of adjective. I.e. the noun preceding an other noun determines it, as there is no formal difference between the nouns and adjectives in English  and the determiner (adjective) always precedes the determined noun. The same happens in Hungarian, so analogous constructions are possible.



This analysis is only possible in modern English. In Old English, which has the same kind of constructions (and from which the modern forms undoubtedly descend), they are clearly operating as compound words, since the 'modifier' is not inflected as an adjective would be. In Old English manuscripts compound words are variably written separately or together.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I think you are reading a bit too much in what is essentially little more than an orthographic convention. Together I find enough to be convinced that these compounds still essentially work like in any other Germanic language.





berndf said:


> The loss of _Fungenlauten _doesn't make _daylight _and _daybook _any less understandable.



Thanks, Bernd.
So it seems that there are no problems with these nouns.
But what about Gitarrenverstärker (guitar amplifier), Küchentisch (kitchen table)?
Is there any grammatical or semantic obstacle, or can we write Gitarren Verstärker, Küchen Tisch, without changing the meaning or make these words less understandable?



Ihsiin said:


> since the 'modifier' is not inflected as an adjective would be. In Old English manuscripts compound words are variably written separately or together.



Thanks a lot for this info!


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## berndf

francisgranada said:


> In expressions like in your example _guitar amplifier,_ the noun _guitar _has the function of adjective.


No it doesn't. If _guitar_ were an adjective the primary stress of the expression would be _guitar *am*plifier_ and not _gui*tar* amplifier_.


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## ahvalj

Ihsiin said:


> In Old English, which has the same kind of constructions (and from which the modern forms undoubtedly descend), they are clearly operating as compound words, since the 'modifier' is not inflected as an adjective would be. In Old English manuscripts compound words are variably written separately or together.


In Old English this is not the same kind of constructions. The language itself was inflexional, and e. g. _ȝoldsmiþ _was equivalent to "smith working with gold": for the latter phrase the words had to be supplied with inflexions. These compounds represented a special word-formational type, inherited from Proto-Indo-European and cognate to similar types in other languages. That the compound words like _goldsmith_ have coincided with the regular grammatical way to join two nouns_, gold smith,_ is the result of the post-Old English development.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Is there any grammatical or semantic obstacle, or can we write Gitarren Verstärker, Küchen Tisch, without changing the meaning or make these words less understandable?


I wouldn't know why not, provided the reader is aware that a text uses deviant spelling logic. What matter more than spelling is, if it is understandable in oral language. And there English and German behave essentially the same (see my post right above). After all, spelling (in phonemic alphabets) is intended to represent oral language in a way, the reader can match it to pronunciation. If an English reader can do that why shouldn't a German reader?


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> I wouldn't know why not, provided the reader is aware that a text uses deviant spelling logic. What matter more than spelling is, if it is understandable in oral language. And there English and German behave essentially the same (see my post right above). After all, spelling (in phonemic alphabets) is intended to represent oral language in a way, the reader can match it to pronunciation. If an English reader can do that why shouldn't a German reader?


Yet, again, what about _das Tageslicht_ and _das Tagebuch?_ If you start writing them separately, what would be the role of the article and what grammatical form would be _Tage?_


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> In Old English this is not the same kind of constructions. The language itself was inflexional, and e. g. _ȝoldsmiþ _was equivalent to "smith working with gold"


Exactly like modern _goldsmith_ or German _Goldschmied_. Those are terms that existed without interruption.


ahvalj said:


> for the latter phrase the words had to be supplied with inflexions


I really can't understand why this basic logical should miraculously disappear with the decay of inflections. Noun inflections are largely gone in German too.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Yet, again, what about _das Tageslicht_ and _das Tagebuch?_


What about it? I don't see your point. I answered the question already. The same words exist in English and that they are lacking _Fugenlaute_ is without consequence. In German, Fugenlaute have also largely become little more than phonetic convenience. Many of them have morphological origin but that is not important. The logic when these Fugenlaute are maintained and when they are dropped is quite chaotic and in some words varies from speaker to speaker, like _Zugmitte _or _Zugsmitte_ (_middle of the train_). Some are more predictable than others (e.g. if the first part is an animal or human it is in plural: Milbenstaub, Pferdehaar, Hundehalsband, Männertreu, etc). But none of these things are semantically required. _Hundhalsband_ just sounds weird but it is no less understandable.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I wouldn't know why not, provided the reader is aware that a text uses deviant spelling logic. What matter more than spelling is, if it is understandable in oral language. And there English and German behave essentially the same


I got it.
Yes, the stress falls on the attributive noun.
Do you think that the insertion of letters like -e-, -(e)n-, -s-, in compound words doesn't depend on grammar? Probably it is true.
From my German grammar book:


> The above examples also illustrate a complication in forming such compounds for which it is unfortunately not possible to formulate prescriptive rules.
> Native speakers can hear where they are required but it is very diffi cult to formulate rules that will be of help to non-native speakers. About the only thing that can be said with a reasonable degree of certainty is that *if a word ends in -e, it will take an n* when another word is joined to it, as illustrated in the two examples above. As for where s is required in compounds, only this can be said: *when a noun ends in -heit/-keit or -ung, an s must be inserted*


It seems that it depends, today, partially on the phonetic enviroment.


berndf said:


> Noun inflections are largely gone in German too.


It is true also for Dutch.


> When Dutch still possessed a case system two part compounds were typically made by putting the first noun in the *genitive case*, e.g.:
> de koning -> genitive des konings (of the king)
> de mantel van de koning -> des konings mantel (the king's mantle) -> de koningsmantel
> However, *not all genitives were formed with -s in Dutch, *some words required -e, other words -en and which word required which in the old system is about as clear as mud for a modern Dutch speaker. Besides, *the old system got corrupted beyond recognition, e.g. bespreking never had a genitive is -s at all*. Until 1995 the orthography of the compounds was still the traditional one that had evolved from the case system but was otherwise rather haphazard.


Nowdays, there are these rules:


> When the word only has a plural with an ending -en, use -en-; otherwise use -e-.
> For the -s- linker there was no need to formulate a rule, but let's make it specific here:When the word is pronounced with and -s-, write an -s-.


So, also in Dutch, it seems that these letters don't depend on grammar (the "en/e" rule is a new one, the "s" rule is based on tradition).


> Dutch speakers will only sympathize if a non-native speaker makes an error linking compounds, because they often still do as well


Dutch/Lesson 7 - Wikibooks, open books for an open world
This is confirmed by a member of this forum who once said that when writing in Dutch he often uses a spell checker.
Are rules more regular in Norwegian and Icelandic?


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Exactly like modern _goldsmith_ or German _Goldschmied_. Those are terms that existed without interruption.
> 
> I really can't understand why this basic logical should miraculously disappear with the decay of inflections. Noun inflections are largely gone in German too.


I may have chosen a didactically wrong example, but let's continue with it. We are discussing here the orthography of compounds. _Goldsmith_ and _Goldschmied _go back to the Late Common Germanic *_gulþasmiþaz_, which was the compound noun back in those times, yet _gulþa-_ didn't exist as a separate word form since the Nom./Acc. Sg. was _*gulþan _and no other case form coincided with *_gulþa._ If one had to create the Late Common Germanic orthography, he had to write such compounds as single words (as it is done in all other cognate languages, like e. g. in Ancient Greek) since such nominal compounds represented single words and not appositions of two separate words (not so with adverbial compounds). In #2 I was trying to explain that these compounds were still perceived as single words by the speakers even at the dawn of modern Germanic orthographies despite the loss of inflexions in many cases. That English has come to the modern system (which, I admit, corresponds to its grammatical type) is the result of the changes in the language and in the psychology of its speakers. From your words I see that German has advanced more than I imagined, so an orthographic revolution may some day introduce the separate writing of each element of the German compounds (after the decapitalization of nouns, please). Yet, what I am trying to argue is that the system when these elements are written together is original (and, may I say, psychologically inherited) while the English mode is secondary.


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## Nino83

In Swedish it seems there is a similar phenomenon.
a) bil däck = bildäck;
b) flick*a* skola = flickskola, pojk*e* namn = pojknamn; -a, -e
c1) parkering hus = parkering*s*hus; with nouns ending in -(n)ing, -ling, -an, -nad, -(i)tet, -(a)tion, -het
c2) if the first noun is a compound, for example fot boll = fotboll but fotboll lag = fotboll*s*lag
d) (Noun + old case ending in -u/-o/-e/-a) + Noun, for example vecka slut = veckoslut; *New compounds formed by this last method are very rare.*

So, it seems that the method d) is not so productive (very rare), an "s" is inserted in some phonetic enviroments or if the first element is a compound noun.
It seems pretty regular and one could (I'm not saying that they *should* do) write flick skola, fotbolls lag. 



Ben Jamin said:


> Example "kylling lever" means "chicked lives (is alive)" (noun + verb). while "kyllinglever" means "chicken liver" (noun + noun), or more precisely (noun [acting as] adjective + noun noun).



In these cases they *could* (not should) use a hyphen, kylling-lever.


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> It seems pretty regular and one could (I'm not saying that they *should* do) write flick skola, fotbolls lag.
> 
> 
> 
> In these cases they *could* (not should) use a hyphen, kylling-lever.


In Italian it would be _miseri cordia,_ _agri cultura, tele visione_?


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> yet _gulþa-_ didn't exist as a separate word form since the Nom./Acc. Sg. was _*gulþan _and no other case form coincided with *_gulþa._


Why would that be of any relevance? I still don't get your point.


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## Nino83

ahvalj said:


> In Italian it would be _miseri cordia,_ _agri cultura, tele visione_?



In Italian there are no attributive nouns. 
I'm asking if it is possible, I'm not proposing some orthographic reform.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Why would that be of any relevance?


What is the formal difference between a compound and an apposition of two words? That the first element of the compound stands in a form different from anyone taken by this word as a separate lexical unit. It is clear to me (a speaker of an inflexional language) and it was clear to Ancient Greeks, Latins, Goths etc. The stage (isolating morphology) reached by English and approached by most other Germanic languages is secondary and rather recent and is the only reason why a question of separate writing can ever arise.

*P. S.* A psychological illustration. In Russian, virtually all nominal compounds are joined by a connecting vowel _o_ or _e_ (etymologically the PIE thematic _*o_ like in _psych*o*logy_). In many cases, the word form ending on _o_ doesn't exist, so even the less literate will write the elements of the compound together (e. g. _мостостроитель/mostostroitʲelʲ_ "bridge builder"), however when the first element is a noun ending on _-o,_ people may write the components separately, like in _местоположение/mʲestopoloʐenʲije_ "location" (literally "place position").


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> In Italian there are no attributive nouns.
> I'm asking if it is possible, I'm not proposing some orthographic reform.


Yet what kind of attributive nouns would be _pojk_ and _flick_ if they don't exist in the the morphology?


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## Nino83

ahvalj said:


> Yet what kind of attributive nouns would be _pojk_ and _flick_ if they don't exist in the the morphology?





Good point.
But in many cases, in Dutch, in German and, in some cases, in Swedish too, it seems it depends on the phonetic enviroment, so if you think these letters are inflections, you're right while if you think, as often happens, that these changes are euphonic, things could be different and this situation could be similar to that of English.
The fact that the Dutch had to set some rule, makes me think.


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> Good point.


Yet, is this that different from _Tagebuch _or _kyrkogård_? I think the separate writing can be justified when the language gets rid of any connecting elements like English has done, otherwise we are at risk of getting obscure elements like _flick, Tage, tele, miseri_ etc. The Genitive _'s_ is acceptable, OK.


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## Nino83

I agree. 
Anyway, it seems that in some languages, for example Dutch, the situation is changing (I edited the comment above).


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> I agree.
> Anyway, it seems that in some languages, for example Dutch, the situation is changing (I edited the comment above).


Yes, I agree, the Germanic languages, other than Icelandic (and Faroese), are changing in the English direction and eventually the survivors will reach this stage. Let's revert to this question in 500 years.


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## Mori.cze

ahvalj said:


> What is the formal difference between a compound and an apposition of two words? That the first element of the compound stands in a form different from anyone taken by this word as a separate lexical unit. It is clear to me (a speaker of an inflexional language) and it was clear to Ancient Greeks, Latins, Goths etc. The stage (isolating morphology) reached by English and approached by most other Germanic languages is secondary and rather recent and is the only reason why a question of separate writing can ever arise.


 As a speaker of an inflexional language I beg to differ. There is no God-given rule that the word need to be declined, or it is not a word. It is all just a (convenient, but not necessary) convention.


ahvalj said:


> In Italian it would be _miseri cordia,_ _agri cultura, tele visione_?


Why not? Do you see any _fundamental_ reason why it would be impossible to write _samo var _in Russian? Or on the contrary,_ chemindefer _in French? The fact that there is no such standalone word as Tage(s) is IMO weak argument, there are tons of not-quite-standalone words which get written on daily basis. Whether such a change would be desirable is completely different question, of course.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> What is the formal difference between a compound and an apposition of two words?


But in English it still is one word. It has all the syntactic, prosodic and semantic characteristics of a Germanic compound noun._ Guitar amplifier_ is one word just like _daylight_ and _daybook_. That it is spelled with a space in between is a linguistically irrelevant, arbitrary orthographic convention.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> But in English it still is one word. It has all the syntactic, prosodic and semantic characteristics of a Germanic compound noun._ Guitar amplifier_ as one word just like _daylight_ and _daybook_. That it is spelled with a space in between is a linguistically irrelevant arbitrary orthographic convention.


I fully agree: I just try to argue that while in modern English the separate spelling never causes any issues, in all other modern Germanic languages this would cause various strange (and grammatically inexplicable) forms to appear, so, back to Nino's question, it is probably still too early to introduce the separate writing to the German or Norwegian orthography. My historical excursion was simply aimed at explaining that the long compound words are not caprices of the medieval Germanic-speaking monks.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> it is probably still too early to introduce the separate writing to the German or Norwegian orthography.


Any why would one want to do that in the first place?


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Any why would one want to do that in the first place?


Globalization: foreign speakers are frightened by these words (see the topic post).


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Globalization: foreign speakers are frightened by these words (see the topic post).


Languages don't evolve around the preferences of foreign learners. This happens only in technical language and is more concerned with vocabulary than with grammar.


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## ahvalj

By the way, if a native English speaker joins the discussion, do you really perceive the likes of _speed limiter_ or _road sign _as single words (not from a linguistic but from a layperson's viewpoint)?


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## bearded

Since in English there are no declensions of nouns, it is simple to have attributive nouns (just one noun before the other..).  But in a language possessing declensions, things are a bit more complicated (I strongly agree with Ahvalji's #8): take for example the word _Bahnhofplatz _(station square).  In the genitive case, it becomes _(des) Bahnhofplatzes _(of the station square). But since an attributive noun has the function of an adjective, the question arises: if the attributive noun is separated, should it be declined like an adjective or remain unchanged?  ((Non-existing)) Bahnhof Platzes or Bahnhofs Platzes.
And since in German _Bahnhof - without further ending - _is either nominative, dative or accusative, this would cause misunderstandings (not to mention words composed of a dozen elements).
Just one more remark:
The existence of both _Tagebuch _and _Tageslicht _proves that the s in the latter has nothing to do with the genitive case:  It is just an insertion mostly for euphonic reasons between certain consonants.


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## Nino83

ahvalj said:


> Globalization: foreign speakers are frightened by these words (see the topic post).



It's all Mark Twain's fault. 

Speaking seriously, I'd say that also in English there is some incongruity, for example you say _three weeks' holiday_ (for time, in general), using the *genitive "case"* (marker), but _a wood table_ (material, made of)_ a cigarette packet _(contained)_ tennis shoes _(purpose, made for)_ history teacher_ (function, of),_ a love story _(argument, about)_ a bicycle shop _(selling)_ guitar amplifier manufacturer_ (production), using the *"common case"*.

If the Swedish or Germans wrote these words separately, there would be more different "inflections", in English there are only two.
So, thinking about it, the current situation is not very different. For example, in Dutch, German and Swedish there would be "only" 4 different "inflections". 



bearded man said:


> But since an attributive noun has the function of an adjective, the question arises: if the attributive noun is separated, should it be declined like an adjective or remain unchanged?



Ihsiin said that "In Old English, which has the same kind of constructions (and from which the modern forms undoubtedly descend), they are clearly operating as compound words, since the 'modifier' is not inflected as an adjective would be. In Old English manuscripts compound words are variably written separately or together."


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## berndf

@ahvalj : The general tendency in late modern English is, by the way, towards spelling things together, contrary to your prediction that languages tend to separate compound words. Spellings like _today_ and _headmaster_ overtook separate spellings (_to-morrow, head-master, head master_) in frequency only in the late 19th, early 20th century.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> @ahvalj : The general tendency in late modern English is, by the way, towards spelling things together, contrary to your prediction that languages tend to separate compound words. Spellings like _today_ and _headmaster_ overtook separate spellings (_to-morrow, head-master, head master_) in frequency only in the late 19th, early 20th century.


As far as I know, the usual arguments in favor of such spellings is that certain word combinations diverge in meaning from their constituting words taken alone. _Headmaster _is a good example.


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## Nino83

The difference between _a year'*s* imprisonement_, *"genitive"*, and_ a wood table_, *"nominative"*, is similar to that between, let's say, _fotball*s* lag_ and _bil däck_ in Swedish.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> As far as I know, the usual arguments in favor of such spellings is that certain word combinations diverge in meaning from their constituting words taken alone. _Headmaster _is a good example.


_Headmaster_ follows a very common logic (the head of the schoolmasters). Germanic compound nouns always require context to be meaningful.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> Any why would one want to do that in the first place?


In Norway only people with a strong feeling for linguistic correctness write the compound words jointly. All others write erratically, mostly separately.


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## francisgranada

berndf said:


> No it doesn't. If _guitar_ were an adjective the primary stress of the expression would be _guitar *am*plifier_ and not _gui*tar* amplifier_.


I didn't said that guitar_ is_ an adjective (however, I could express myself more exactly). The substance of what I tried to say (post #23) is that the actual German spelling seems to me understandable and logical; at the same time the English "spelling logic" is also understandable when taking in consideration the attributive function of the first element of two consecutive nouns (see also Bearded man's post #51). 





ahvalj said:


> By the way, if a native English speaker joins the discussion, do you really perceive the likes of _speed limiter_ or _road sign _as single words (not from a linguistic but from a layperson's viewpoint)?


I am not a native English speaker, but I have the impression that the parallel existence of more types of spelling in English (separate, together, hyphen) demonstrates quite well the (possible/probable) uncertainty.

I wouldn't like to be OT, but I think my experiences in my mother tongue are worth mentioning here.  The compound words in Hungarian are considered (also spontaneously by "laypersons")  as _one word_ and they are traditionally written together, e.g. _mother tongue_ is  _anyanyelv _(anya=mother, nyelv=tongue).   The logic of "the primary stress" _essentially _works also in Hungarian, exactly like Berdnf has pointed out (i.e.  _*a*nyanyelv _and not _anyany*e*lv_)_._ Inspite of this "clear system", common people have serious doubts  in many cases, i.e. whether to write together or separately, especially in case of "modern" terms (like  _guitar amplifier_, for example). Interestingly, the pronunciation doesn't help either, I guess because it's influenced by other factors as well.


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## berndf

francisgranada said:


> I didn't said that guitar_ is_ an adjective (however, I could express myself more exactly)


Ok, you meant that the first noun _attributes _the second. I can agree to that.


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## Ihsiin

ahvalj said:


> By the way, if a native English speaker joins the discussion, do you really perceive the likes of _speed limiter_ or _road sign _as single words (not from a linguistic but from a layperson's viewpoint)?



It would depend on how they are presented. If you asked about _cat food_ people might say two words, but if you asked about _catfood_ they'd say one. If you used a hyphen you'd probably get a mixed response.



Nino83 said:


> Speaking seriously, I'd say that also in English there is some incongruity, for example you say _three weeks' holiday_ (for time, in general), using the *genitive "case"* (marker), but _a wood table_ (material, made of)_ a cigarette packet _(contained)_ tennis shoes _(purpose, made for)_ history teacher_ (function, of),_ a love story _(argument, about)_ a bicycle shop _(selling)_ guitar amplifier manufacturer_ (production), using the *"common case"*.



Just a note, the phrase _three weeks' holiday_ is different from _three week holiday_. The former refers to the amount of holiday being taken, while the latter simply refers to a holiday lasting three weeks. Also, we wouldn't say _wood table_, but _wooden table _(which is adjective-noun) - on the other hand, we _would_ say _wood carving_, which is a compound.


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## ahvalj

Ihsiin said:


> It would depend on how they are presented. If you asked about _cat food_ people might say two words, but if you asked about _catfood_ they'd say one. If you used a hyphen you'd probably get a mixed response.


And then, linguistically speaking, what would be the boundary between a compound and a free apposition of two nouns or an adjective and a noun in the language without morphological agreement, like English, Chinese or Hungarian: say, why should _fast food_ be regarded as a compound while _last supper_ (_letzt*e* Abendmahl_) should not?


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## Nino83

Ihsiin said:


> Also, we wouldn't say _wood table_, but _wooden table _(which is adjective-noun) - on the other hand, we _would_ say _wood carving_, which is a compound.


I was confused because before I wrote, I googled and I found an American video called "Refinishing a Wood Table" and then I wrote it.



Ihsiin said:


> Just a note, the phrase _three weeks' holiday_ is different from _three week holiday_. The former refers to the amount of holiday being taken, while the latter simply refers to a holiday lasting three weeks.



I'm a bit confused.
Here it is said that:



> The style guide for Guardian Unlimited shows a distinction between adjectival and adverbial terms, which leads to a useful test:
> Use apostrophes in phrases such as in two days' time, 12 years' imprisonment and *six weeks' holiday*, where the *time period* (two days) *modifies a noun* (time), but *not in nine months pregnant or three weeks old*, where the *time period is adverbial* (*modifying an adjective* such as pregnant or old) - if in doubt, test with a singular such as one day's time, one month pregnant



and  here



> Fowler's Modern English Usage states in the section "Possessive Puzzles":Five years' imprisonment, Three weeks' holiday, etc. Years and weeks may be treated *as possessives* and given an apostrophe or as adjectival nouns without one. The former is perhaps better, as to conform to what is* inevitable in the singular* – a year's imprisonment, a fortnight's holiday.



I thought the word "inevitable" meant that you can write only "week's holiday" and not "week holiday" when there is only one week. 

Yes, in the plural there are two different meanings



> _"She had ten weeks' vacation" -_ multiple vacations totalling ten weeks
> _"She had a ten week vacation" -_ a single vacation of ten weeks



In "She had a ten week vacation" should we use the hyphen, "She had a ten-week vacation"?

Thank you for the info.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that also in English there can be different "inflections" (two, nominative and genitive) and this doesn't stop English speakers from writing separately this type of nouns.


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## bearded

Ihsiin said:


> the phrase _three weeks' holiday_ is different from _three week holiday_


Shouldn't the latter be written as _(a) three-week holiday? _I thought a hyphen was necessary in such cases (like in _a ten-mile run _or a _lift-boy service)._
But my English is far from perfect.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> And then, linguistically speaking, what would be the boundary between a compound and a free apposition of two nouns or an adjective and a noun in the language without morphological agreement, like English, Chinese or Hungarian: say, why should _fast food_ be regarded as a compound while _last supper_ (_letzt*e* Abendmahl_) should not?


Semantically, an apposition modifies a noun by describing the same object from different perspectives. But a _guitar _is a different object than an _amplifier_.

Apposition, adjective+noun and compound noun are morphologically distinguished in English. I don't know how it is in your language but in Germanic languages, including English, stress pattern and hiatus are morphologically relevant modifications and they differentiate the three constructs unambiguously.


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## Ihsiin

ahvalj said:


> And then, linguistically speaking, what would be the boundary between a compound and a free apposition of two nouns or an adjective and a noun in the language without morphological agreement, like English, Chinese or Hungarian: say, why should _fast food_ be regarded as a compound while _last supper_ (_letzt*e* Abendmahl_) should not?



I wouldn't regard _fast food_ as a compound, but as an adjective-noun construction. If you want to test these constructions you can try rephrase with _is_; thus, "the food is fast", "the supper is last", but you can't say "the amplifier is guitar".



Nino83 said:


> I thought the word "inevitable" meant that you can write only "week's holiday" and not "week holiday" when there is only one week.



You can't say "a week holiday", but you can say "a one week holiday". In terms of hyphenage, for me this is all much of a muchness. I have often seen variations of compound constructions with or without hyphens, conjoined or separated. I suppose there is probably some officially correct style, but I don't bother too much about that.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> I wouldn't regard _fast food_ as a compound, but as an adjective-noun construction. If you want to test these constructions you can try rephrase with _is_; thus, "the food is fast", "the supper is last", but you can't say "the amplifier is guitar".


_Fast food_ follows the stress pattern of _guitar amplifier_ and not that of_ last supper_.
Only the final element of a Germanic compound nouns needs to be a nouns (because it determines the object that is qualified), other elements are more flexible. Compare German _Heißgetränk _that is morphologically and semantically distinct from _heiß*es* Getränk_.

PS: _Fast-food _(compound) and _fast food_ (attributive adjective) are semantically different things as well. _Fast-food_ is not _food _that is _fast_. It is food for a fast meal. It is typical for compounds that the semantic relation is rather free.


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## ahvalj

OK, then let me ask the topic question from an opposite perspective. If the English compounds have a separate stress pattern (I guess the main stress is on the first word whereas the second one gets a weakened secondary stress) then why should these words be written separately: why _guitar_ _amplifier _and not _guitaramplifier~guitar-amplifier_?


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## francisgranada

ahvalj said:


> OK, then let me ask the topic question from an opposite perspective. If the English compounds have a separate stress pattern (I guess the main stress is on the first word whereas the second one gets a weakened secondary stress) then why should these words be written separately: why _guitar_ _amplifier _and not _guitaramplifier~guitar-amplifier_?


It's a question of convention, however long compounds not separated at all would be diffucult to read in English, as you have to see all the word to be able to pronounce it. Perhaps, this one of the practical reasons of the separate writing.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> OK, then let me ask the topic question from an opposite perspective. If the English compounds have a separate stress pattern (I guess the main stress is on the first word whereas the second one gets a weakened secondary stress) then why should these words be written separately: why _guitar_ _amplifier _and not _guitaramplifier~guitar-amplifier_?


I don't know and I don't want to indulge in baseless speculation.


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## Nino83

Ihsiin said:


> You can't say "a week holiday", but you can say "a one week holiday".


Ok, I see. So, in "a week's holiday" the word "week" is a noun and the Saxon genitive works like a preposition.
We can say that in English every single "noun adjunct" has the same form of the corresponding noun, while this doesn't happen in German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic.


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## Ihsiin

berndf said:


> _Fast food_ follows the stress pattern of _guitar amplifier_ and not that of_ last supper_.
> Only the final element of a Germanic compound nouns needs to be a nouns (because it determines the object that is qualified), other elements are more flexible. Compare German _Heißgetränk _that is morphologically and semantically distinct from _heiß*es* Getränk_.
> 
> PS: _Fast-food _(compound) and _fast food_ (attributive adjective) are semantically different things as well. _Fast-food_ is not _food _that is _fast_. It is food for a fast meal. It is typical for compounds that the semantic relation is rather free.



This is not my feeling concerning _fast food_. I feel that the stress pattern for _fast food_ is the same as for _last supper_ (that is to say, spondaic), and that _fast food_ actually signifies food that is fast, that is to say, food that comes quickly (as opposed to food from a proper restaurant that you have to wait longer for). But these are just my feelings as a speaker of the language - I can't back these up with empirical evidence.



ahvalj said:


> OK, then let me ask the topic question from an opposite perspective. If the English compounds have a separate stress pattern (I guess the main stress is on the first word whereas the second one gets a weakened secondary stress) then why should these words be written separately: why _guitar_ _amplifier _and not _guitaramplifier~guitar-amplifier_?



This is simply convention, and any creative writer of the English language can judge how to use and bend these conventions. James Joyce, for example, used plenty of constructed compounds, without space or hyphen, such as:

"The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit."

John Dos Passos tried to imitate Joyce in this regard, but in my opinion didn't quite manage to pull it off.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> This is not my feeling concerning _fast food_. I feel that the stress pattern for _fast food_ is the same as for _last supper_


All dictionaries I consulted agree with me, primary stress is on the first, secondary stress on the second component. One is online. And here you don't have a transcription and but the sound sample in clear.


Ihsiin said:


> that is to say, spondaic


The is an insufficient concept. English, like other Germanic languages, distinguishes three and not two stress levels while meter only distinguishes two.


Ihsiin said:


> and that _fast food_ actually signifies food that is fast, that is to say, food that comes quickly


You realise that this is a self-contradiction? I _comes_ fast, it _is_ not fast, i.e. the people who prepare it _are _fast, not the food.


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## ahvalj

So, can somebody formulate the conclusions concerning the topic question?


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## francisgranada

Ihsiin said:


> This is not my feeling concerning _fast food_. I feel that the stress pattern for _fast food_ is the same as for _last supper_ (that is to say, spondaic)  and that _fast food_ actually signifies food that is fast,...


Regardless of your explanation of "the reason why", this coincides with what I've said before (#58), i.e. I still perceive some  uncertainty (or subjective feeling/attitude) both in English and in my mother tongue (in spite of Berndf's logical and acceptable answers) ...


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## francisgranada

ahvalj said:


> So, can somebody formulate the conclusions concerning the topic question?


If the topic question is


> ... why in the other Germanic languages you don't use the same English construction (attributive noun or noun adjunct), writing these words separately.


then in my opinion this question necessarily leads to the following "subquestions"  that we are practically discussing about:
- why the compound words in other Germanic languages (especially in German) are written together
- why is it admissible to write the elements of compound words separately in English
- why are some (real or apparent) compounds written  separately, while others are written together or with hyphen in English
- is there any applicable criterion, independent on the orthographical conventions, that unambiguously determines the difference between compounds and free appositions (especially of two nouns)

(I think many of these questions have already been answered, even if - perhaps - not satisfactorily enough ...)


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## Hulalessar

ahvalj said:


> And then, linguistically speaking, what would be the boundary between a compound and a free apposition of two nouns or an adjective and a noun in the language without morphological agreement, like English, Chinese or Hungarian: say, why should _fast food_ be regarded as a compound while _last supper_ (_letzt*e* Abendmahl_) should not?



Apposition on the one hand and noun1 + noun2 where noun1 qualifies noun2 on the other are two distinct things. Apposition is where you refer to the same thing twice in different ways and place them next to each other. In "My brother James is in the garden" both "my brother" and "James" refer to the same person. However, in "Bradford station is closed" "Bradford" qualifies "station". The sentence tells you that it is a station which is closed. You can communicate the fact that it is a station which is closed by saying "The station is closed" but not by saying "Bradford is closed" (unless of course the context is such that the word "station" is understood).

In a language like English which has fairly strong isolating tendencies there are cases where really all you can say is that one word is qualifying another. Trying to decide whether what you have is (a) noun-functioning-as-adjective + noun, (b) adjective + noun or (c) compound noun, amounts to no more than an exercise in arbitrary labelling. That does not mean that there are not many words which can usefully be described as adjectives.

The question the OP raises does not though really involve deciding what parts of speech are involved, but rather deciding what a word is and how strongly your idea of what a word is in a particular language is influenced by the way it is written, the position being complicated by the fact that the way a word is written presupposes some prior analysis.


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## Ihsiin

berndf said:


> All dictionaries I consulted agree with me, primary stress is on the first, secondary stress on the second component. One is online. And here you don't have a transcription and but the sound sample in clear.
> 
> The is an insufficient concept. English, like other Germanic languages, distinguishes three and not two stress levels while meter only distinguishes two.
> 
> You realise that this is a self-contradiction? I _comes_ fast, it _is_ not fast, i.e. the people who prepare it _are _fast, not the food.



I must stress again that I'm talking only from my own experience and I haven't collected any data or anything, but having checked out these two links, I can say this is definitely not how I pronounce the phrase, nor how the phrase is pronounced by my contemporaries. My most natural pronunciation is definitely equal stress. Having consulted the OED, I find this pronunciation listed as American. It's possible that it has invaded Britain. It's certainly present here, and how I would pronounce the phrase.

In terms of the semantics, of course the food isn't literally fast, insomuch as it doesn't move under its own steam (though we might ask ourselves whether something needs to be travelling under its own power in order to be called "fast" in a literal sense, but let's not get philosophical about this). But the description of the food as fast can be broader than this. At a restaurant, a diner might say to his fellow: "The food here is very fast," with the sense that in this restaurant the food arrives promptly, and in my mind this is a perfectly ordinary and acceptable sentence. Of course, that doesn't make it _fast food_, just as a final dinner isn't necessarily the _last supper_, but we see how the phrase could be constructed.

This is not, of course, to say that the etymology of _fast food_ is necessarily what I have suggested - I have framed all these posts by painting myself as expressing my feelings as a speaker, not my convictions as a researcher. But I hope I have given enough framework to demonstrate how my thinking makes sense. The rest is down to evidence.


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## bearded

francisgranada said:


> why the compound words in other Germanic languages (especially in German) are written together,
> - why is it admissible to write the elements of compound words separately in English
> ....
> I think many of these questions have already been answered, even if, perhaps, not satisfactorily enough


I have modestly tried to answer at least these two questions, in my above post #51. My explanation is perhaps not convincing enough...
A steamship-travel duration is ugly but clear,
eine Dampfschiffahrtsdauer is clear,
eine Dampf Schiff Fahrt Dauer  would be just confusing.


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## bragpipes

I have to say that as a native speaker, what is a compound and what is not seems completely arbitrary.

Facelift is a compound, boob job isn't, yet blowjob is.  Spell check isn't, deathmatch is, but death wish isn't.  Road rage isn't, truckstop yes, bus stop no, racehorse yes, arms race no, etc.   In my head, they're all compounds and I think that that's the direction the language is going in, looking at the way new words are spelled:

deathmatch, speedrun, facecheck, darknet, flatscreen.  More?

abandonware, agentspace, codespace, audioboard, blackhole, bloatware, bluescreen, capslock, bootup, changelog, checkpoint, classloader, clickstream, daughterboard, datalink, crosspost, dogfood, hatemail, fileserver, hashkey, keymapping, touchpad, touchscreen, filesharing, headhunter etc.

A big force in the push towards compounding is the use of these nouns as verbs.
We filmed it with a green screen = we greenscreened it.  
My computer showed me the blue screen of death = "I don't know what happened.. It just bluescreened on me."
We use our own products internally as end users = we eat our own dog food = we dogfood our products.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> This is not, of course, to say that the etymology of _fast food_ is necessarily what I have suggested


Ok. So, both interpretations are possible and the corresponding two pronunciations both occur. Can we agree on that?


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## Nino83

bragpipes said:


> In my head, they're all compounds



If there is some variability also in English, I think it is only an orthographic convention.
The English write _university student_ and _guitar amplifier_ while Norwegians write _universitet*s*student_ and the Swedish write _gitarrförstärkare_.
The "problem" is that the word _agricoltura_ is present in Italian dictionaries while I can't find _gitarrförstärkare_.
This makes me think that
a) "Germanic" dictionaries are not good, because they don't list every single noun
b) these "nouns" are not seen/understood as a single unit (like _agricoltura_ is) but they are just a sequence of _attributive noun + noun_.

I opt for the latter. They are not real compound nouns.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I opt for the latter. They are not real compound nouns


There is a third option and that is the most widely accepted one: Noun compounding is a _productive_ derivation mechanism.


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## myšlenka

Nino83 said:


> I opt for the latter. They are not real compound nouns.


I am curious. If syntactic and prosodic incorporation isn't enough, then what does it take for something to be a compound? Semantic non-transparency?


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> There is a third option and that is the most widely accepted one: Noun compounding is a _productive_ derivation mechanism.



Also in Italian language there are new compound nouns, like _pescecane, caffellatte, lavastoviglie, saliscendi, sempreverde, tragicomico, _and are all listed in dictionaries.  While _ferro da stiro, scarpe da tennis, amplificatore per chitarra_ are not present in dictionaries because they are different nouns.  
_Gitarrförstärkaren_ (guitar amplifiers) and _effektförstärkaren_ (power amplifiers) were invented 50 years ago. 



myšlenka said:


> I am curious. If syntactic and prosodic incorporation isn't enough, then what does it take for something to be a compound? Semantic non-transparency?



This could be a method. For example _pescecane_ (literally _fishdog_) can mean both _squalo_ (_shark_) and _profittatore_ (_profiteer_), it's not a dog, _caffellatte_ it's neither a type of milk nor a type of coffe, it's coffe with milk, and so on. 
While _tennis shoes, guitar amplifiers_ are, simply _shoes_ made for _tennis_ and _amplifiers_ made for _guitars_.
This is why you don't find them on a dictionary.


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## myšlenka

Nino83 said:


> This could be a method. For example _pescecane_ (literally _fishdog_) can mean both _squalo_ (_shark_) and _profittatore_ (_profiteer_), it's not a dog, _caffellatte_ it's neither a type of milk nor a type of coffe, it's coffe with milk, and so on.
> While _tennis shoes, guitar amplifiers_ are, simply _shoes_ made for _tennis_ and _amplifiers_ made for _guitars_.
> This is why you don't find them on a dictionary.


Compounding is, like berndf explains in #82, a productive derviation mechanism. In a way you can say that it's syntax within the noun. Saying that transparent compounds aren't real compounds makes as much sense as saying that sentences with a transparent meaning aren't real sentences.


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## Nino83

@myšlenka 
Maybe I've chosen the wrongs words.
I mean that if a compound is a new entity with a different meaning, it is better to write it as a single word and to list it.
If a compound is not listed because its meaning is clear, there are no obstacles and one could write it separately, because in this case the first noun is simply an attribute of the second one. This often happens in English.


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> ... For example _pescecane_ (literally _fishdog_) can mean both _squalo_ (_shark_) and _profittatore_ (_profiteer_), it's not a dog, _caffellatte_ it's neither a type of milk nor a type of coffe, it's coffe with milk, and so on.
> While _tennis shoes, guitar amplifiers_ are, simply _shoes_ made for _tennis_ and _amplifiers_ made for _guitars_.
> This is why you don't find them on a dictionary.


Yes, but _ferro da stiro_ is not simply a "piece of iron for spreading (or so)", so according to this logic we should find it in the dictionary.

P.S. All in all it is a bit strange ... According to the orthography, the name of the same object can be found e.g. in the Hungarian dicctionary, but not in the Italian one (or vice versa) ...


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## myšlenka

Nino83 said:


> @myšlenka
> Maybe I've chosen the wrongs words.
> I mean that if a compound is a new entity with a different meaning, it is better to write it as a single word and to list it.
> If a compound is not listed because its meaning is clear, there are no obstacles and one could write it separately, because in this case the first noun is simply an attribute of the second one.


Sure. Let's base spelling on vague ideas about semantic distance rather than connecting it to syntax, prosody and pronunciation.


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> Yes, but _ferro da stiro_ is not simply a "piece of iron for spreading (or so)", so according to this logic we should find it in the dictionary.



_Quando stiri una camicia_, creased texile fibres become more streched, so you stretch/spread them.



myšlenka said:


> Sure. Let's base spelling on vague ideas about semantic distance rather than connecting it to syntax, prosody and pronunciation.



Ok, if it is impossible, there will be nouns not listed in dictionaries. For me it's ok.


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> ...  If a compound is not listed because its meaning is clear, there are no obstacles and one could write it separately, because in this case the first noun is simply an attribute of the second one.


I would agree, but the difference is not always clear. For example the corresponding term for_ tennis shoe_ (written together in Hungarian) in my country means also a "kind of shoe" (sneakers/jogging shoe, or something like this), not necessarily used for tennis or sporting activities. 





> _Quando stiri una camicia_, creased texile fibres become more streched, so you stretch/spread them.


Of course, but you cannot guess how to say this tool in Italian on the basis of other languages. In other words, the construction_ ferro da stiro_ is not "obvious". This is not the case of _guitar amplifier_, for example.


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> In other words, the construction_ ferro da stiro_ is not "obvious". This is not the case of _guitar amplifier_, for example.



It is as regular as _scarpe da tennis_ (scarpe per giocare a tennis), _scarpe da calcio_ (scarpe per giocare calcio), _ferro da stiro_ (ferro per stirare fibre tessili).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Also in Italian language there are new compound nouns, like _pescecane, caffellatte, lavastoviglie, saliscendi, sempreverde, tragicomico, _and are all listed in dictionaries. While _ferro da stiro, scarpe da tennis, amplificatore per chitarra_ are not present in dictionaries because they are different nouns.
> _Gitarrförstärkaren_ (guitar amplifiers) and _effektförstärkaren_ (power amplifiers) were invented 50 years ago.


Please note that I highlighted _productive _in my answer. You have a few compound nouns. But the mechanism is not 1% as productive as in Germanic languages. That cannot be compared.


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> It is as regular as _scarpe da tennis_ (scarpe per giocare a tennis), _scarpe da calcio_ (scarpe per giocare calcio), _ferro da stiro_ (ferro per stirare fibre tessili).


Ciao Nino . Io ti capisco., however the "problem" is not with the regularness of the construction _da stirare _but rather with _ferro_. The name of this tool is not automatically derivable from _ferro _(in spite of the English _iron_).





berndf said:


> ... You have a few compound nouns. But the mechanism is no 1% as productive as in Germanic languages.


Even more, in Italian we also have "discrepancies". For example _caffellatte _or _capostazione_, but_ lingua madre_ (separately).


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> Please note that I highlighted _productive _in my answer. You have a few compound nouns. But the mechanism is no 1% as productive as in Germanic languages. That cannot be compared.


Ok. So, the problem is that the dictionaries of Germanic languages can't list all them because there are too many compound nouns.
Seeing that compound nouns often become verbs, can we say that English (and the other Germanic languages) is becoming agglutinative?
In German orthography, is it possible to write _two oneweekbusinesstrips_?


francisgranada said:


> Even more, in Italian we also have "discrepancies". For example _caffellatte _or _capostazione_, but_ lingua madre_ (separately).


_Madrelingua_ (which is a compound noun) means _mother tongue, first language, native language_. For example _la madrelingua degli italiani è l'italiano_.
_Lingua madre_ is the ancestor, for example Latin, while _lingue figlie_ are the descendants, for example Italian, French, Spanish, and so on.
In the second case, the nouns _madre_ and _figlia_ are attributive nouns, so they are written separately.
It seems there is some German influence.


> madrelingua
> [ma-dre-lìn-gua] agg. e n.m. e f. invar.
> *Etimologia:* ← comp. di _madre_ e _lingua_, sul modello del ted. *muttersprache*.


Ricerca | Garzanti Linguistica


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> In German orthography, is it possible to write _two oneweekbusinesstrips_?


_Einwochengeschäftsreise _-- That's not what you usually say but it would be a legal word.


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## francisgranada

berndf said:


> _Einwochengeschäftsreise _-- That's not what you usually say but it would be a legal word.


But perhaps not _Einwochegeschäftreise_ (_Woche _instead of _Wochen_ and _Geschäft_ instead of _Geschäfts_)_. _I am not able/competent to judge if this little differences are really significant, but I have the  feeling/impression (nothing more) that this also contributes to the fact that it's in general "easier" to accept writing the elements of compound words together in German than in English.


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## berndf

The _n_ is indeed non-optional. Feminine nouns ending in _-e_ invariably get an _-n_ in compounds.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> _Einwochengeschäftsreise _-- That's not what you usually say but it would be a legal word.



Does it mean that most of the time compound nouns composed by three or more words are legal terms in German?


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Does it mean that most of the time compound nouns composed by three or more words are legal terms in German?


Yes. There is a famous children's game to create the longest legal word starting with _Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft_. Some people find this to easy and only start after _Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenabzeichenpolierer.
Donau- = Danube
dampf- = steam
schiff- = ship
farht-s- = faring
gesellschaft-s- = company
kapitän-s- = captain
mütze-n- = cap
abzeichen- = badge
polierer = someone who polishes things._


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> Yes. There is a famous children's game to create the longest legal word starting with _Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft_.



I remember the time I studied the German _pandettistica_ (_Pandektenwissenschaft_ in German  ). There were a lot of long German words but it wasn't necessary for us to know them in order to pass exams.  
Which is the normal limit in ordinary words?


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> ... _Madrelingua_ (which is a compound noun) means _mother tongue, first language, native language_. For example _la madrelingua degli italiani è l'italiano_.
> _Lingua madre_ is the ancestor, for example Latin, while _lingue figlie_ are the descendants, for example Italian, French, Spanish, and so on.
> In the second case, the nouns _madre_ and _figlia_ are attributive nouns, so they are written separately.


_Lingua madre _means also _mather tongue_, see e.g. here   and  madrelingua can be written also separately ... I do not want contradict to your logic at all, _anzi_, essentially this is the  rule in Hungarian. I only wanted to point out that in many cases it's not easy to determine unambiguously which is the case.  

(According to Buvári Márta, a Hungarian linguist:  in some cases, the decision whether to write together or separately, should be left to the author of the text, as he knows best what he wants to express exactly).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Which is the normal limit in ordinary words?


Hard to say. The longest word that really exists ("short"  title in parentheses of a federal by-law) is
_Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung_ (text).


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> _Lingua madre _means also _mather tongue_,



It is a common error. 



berndf said:


> Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung



Thank you.  
I meant in non-legal terms.


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> It is a common error.


Thanks for the info.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I meant in non-legal terms.


As I said, hard to say. Different people have different habits I'd say up to four elements they can easily occur. E.g. _Flughafenreinigungspersonal_ (_airport cleaning staff_) sounds completely natural even in colloquial conversations. Above that, air gets thinner. I think instead of _Flughafenreinigungspersonalkantine_ one would say _Kantine für das Flughafenreinigungspersonal_ while _Personalkantine_ in itself is perfectly natural.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I'd say up to four elements they can easily occur.



Thank you!


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## Red Arrow

Nino83 said:


> a) "Germanic" dictionaries are not good, because they don't list every single noun


It is mentioned in the introduction of basically every Dutch dictionary that it is impossible to include every compound, because there is an infinite amount of compounds in the Dutch language.

The Scandinavian and German dictionaries probably do the same thing.


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## Ben Jamin

Red Arrow :D said:


> It is mentioned in the introduction of basically every Dutch dictionary that it is impossible to include every compound, because there is an infinite amount of compounds in the Dutch language.
> 
> The Scandinavian and German dictionaries probably do the same thing.


The Norwegian dictionaries list only "existing" compunds, which means only those that have a certain frequency of use. The media announce from time to time bombasytically that a new word has been  "created", that is that a new compound has become fashionable.


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## Scholiast

Greetings
Maybe I'm out of my depth here, but...


berndf said:


> _Headmaster_ follows a very common logic (the head of the schoolmasters).


_Chorleiter_ means chorus-director. By this logic, "Headmaster" would be what? a _Friseur_? 
Σ


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## berndf

As I said, _head of the schoolmasters_. The equivalent of _Chorleiter_ would be _Schulleiter_, and that is indeed what headmasters are called in German.

The theoretical equivalent of _headmaster_ would be _*Haupt(schul)meister_. I don't think this was ever used for school headmasters. But there is a police rank _Hauptmeister_ (similar  to sergent).


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## Encolpius

Nino83 said:


> ... The difference is that when you read a German compound word, it's possible that you can't find it on a dictionary, while if it were written separately, it would be easier to find it.



Hm, I think you have a better chance to find a compound German word in a German dictionary than a separate English word combination and it is easier (for editors) to make German dictionaries with a much larger vocabulary. You have the word "price war". Now the English editor has to make a decision where to put that word, that's why you often see in English dictionaries "price war" see: war. While it is easy as pie in German: Preiskrieg and basta. That's why I prefer German dictionaries.

I agree with Francisgranada, I, too, have always found writing of those English words chaotic and not very practical, although more liberal. (maybe nicer ) (Just like the Hungarian one)

I wonder why Francigranada forgot to mention an interesting aspect of the Hungarian orthography of compounds (maybe English, too), ie.: *tastefulness*. There are a few rules which reasons are only they look better that way. If the Hungarian compound is made up of more than 6 syllables you use hyphen (I don't know the exact rules), or you write only two identical consonants instead of three. And my observation is common people dislike too long words in Hungarian and tend to write it separately against the rules.


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## Red Arrow

Hello everyone. I wonder what you think of this sentence from an English article.
_
Wang et al. (2009) reported some
QTLs for panicle number and grain yield related to N-deficiency
tolerance in *a chromosome segment substitution line population*
with ‘Nipponbare’-substituted segment in the ‘93-11’ background._

The Dutch word "chromosoomsegmentsubstitutielijnpopulatie" would sound wrong. The addition of population / populatie makes the word incomprehensible. I would have said: *een populatie van chromosoomsegment-substitutielijnen*. (Technically there shouldn't even be a hyphen, but some 'language authorities' don't consider it wrong if it makes the word more readable)

It should be clear that English compounding can be just as extensive as in other Germanic languages.


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## Ihsiin

Red Arrow :D said:


> It should be clear that English compounding can be just as extensive as in other Germanic languages.



Indeed, but it's more digestible because most of the elements are presented as separate words in writing. Berndf notes that German _Flughafenreinigungspersonalkantine _is not a very usable compound, but the English _airport cleaning staff canteen _sounds perfectly fine to me.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> Indeed, but it's more digestible because most of the elements are presented as separate words in writing. Berndf notes that German _Flughafenreinigungspersonalkantine _is not a very usable compound, but the English _airport cleaning staff canteen _sounds perfectly fine to me.


I sometimes suspect that the mandatory merger of compounds into a single lexeme in German and Dutch is more than just an orthographic convention. The ability in English to distinguish between lexically merged (like _headmaster_) and lexically separate compounds (like _head office_) gives English some additional flexibility.


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## Red Arrow

Ihsiin said:


> Indeed, but it's more digestible because most of the elements are presented as separate words in writing. Berndf notes that German _Flughafenreinigungspersonalkantine _is not a very usable compound, but the English _airport cleaning staff canteen _sounds perfectly fine to me.


I disagree. It is not the spelling that makes the word unusable. When I speak out loud, luchthavenreiniging*s*personeel*s*kantine sounds awful. And I don't see written words in my mind when I speak.

i think two interfixes in one word always sound wrong. Same in English and the Romance languages, I think. "archaeograph" sounds like a word. "graphology" sounds like a word. "archaeographology" sounds wrong.


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## Nino83

Red Arrow :D said:


> "archaeographology" sounds wrong.


Really? It sounds good to me.


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## Stoggler

What’s wrong with archaeographology?


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## francisgranada

_Archaeographology_ cannot be written separetely because _archaeo_ and _grapho_ are rather prefixes, not existing English words ...


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## Hulalessar

francisgranada said:


> _Archaeographology_ cannot be written separetely because _archaeo_ and _grapho_ are rather prefixes, not existing English words ...



But in a_rchaeographology_ only _archaeo_- is a prefix whilst the suffix is -_ology_, leaving _graph _in between. _Archaeographology_ is a variety of _graphology_.


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## Red Arrow

I typed this word in on Google to find out that some people actually use this word I made up  I guess this only counts for Dutch words. (or Germanic words, perhaps)


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## francisgranada

Hulalessar said:


> But in a_rchaeographology_ only _archaeo_- is a prefix whilst the suffix is -_ology_, leaving _graph _in between. _Archaeographology_ is a variety of _graphology_.


I would analyze it rather as  _archaeo _+ _grapho _+ _logy _(<logia). It seems to be an artificially coined word, so the -o- in _grapho _is discutable. However, even if we consider -_ology _to be a suffix, the practical result is the same: the word _archaeographology _cannot be written separately as neither _archaeo _nor _ology _are valid words in English (as far as I know).


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