Re:Why the German language has so many great words
by jfaucett on Saturday March 12, 2016 @07:40AM
(#11272617)
German, having maintained more of its agglutinate "Germanic" roots than English over the centuries, has a fantastic morphological system for new word formation. For this reason, I've often thought it would be great if more new terminology were to originate from German.
Here are just a few of my favorite compounds you will likely struggle to form in less compound languages.
1. Spannungsbogen <=> the series of events which create suspense
2. Fernweh <=> the desire to go to other countries / leave your homeland
3. Torschlusspanik <=> being worried at the last minute
4. Leitmotiv <=> theme
And the list just keeps going. Because of the compound nature of German if you know the constituent parts of a word you will almost always have a pretty good idea about its meaning. Good examples of this from the IT world are : hochfahren vs. "boot", Zeichenkette vs "string", weiterleiten vs "forward", einhängen vs. "mount", etc.
Here are just a few of my favorite compounds you will likely struggle to form in less compound languages.
1. Spannungsbogen <=> the series of events which create suspense
2. Fernweh <=> the desire to go to other countries / leave your homeland
3. Torschlusspanik <=> being worried at the last minute
4. Leitmotiv <=> theme
And the list just keeps going. Because of the compound nature of German if you know the constituent parts of a word you will almost always have a pretty good idea about its meaning. Good examples of this from the IT world are : hochfahren vs. "boot", Zeichenkette vs "string", weiterleiten vs "forward", einhängen vs. "mount", etc.