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ox2bad t1_je6g67z wrote

Reply to comment by HlTLERS_HIDDEN_CHILD in English is such an unreasonable language that spelling is a national sport by eldrolamam

They don’t have spelling bees in German. They just eliminate spaces between words sometimes. “Rindfleisch” = cow meat (beef) and the end is “Gesetz” which means law.

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araralc t1_je774g1 wrote

Sometimes i wanna cry when people seriously believe that "this German word doesn't exist in English" but in the end it's just a lot of words without a space in-between. I feel like a part of it is that language terms sometimes try to universalize things that are different from language to language. Some languages don't merge whole words (they might have words by merging, but it changes the structure of them) some merge a couple words, and some merge a lot of words. Some traditionally don't even have spaces at all.

I'd say English falls into the middle category. Starlight are two words in one. I haven't studied proper English grammar but if i remember correctly in my main language similar words (with whole merging) are considered neologisms and actually two words. In English i feel like it's considered one. Which draws a weird line when you consider German comparatively, and not individually.

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orbital_narwhal t1_je79zs6 wrote

> this German word doesn't exist in English

It’s very common that a language has a distinct word for a concept for which no distinct word exists in another language. But that’s not the same as composite words. Although sometimes composites take on a different or additional meaning than just the combination of their parts (see below).

I can think of a bunch of German words that really do not exist in English except for their loanwords:

  • Zeitgeist
  • Weltschmerz
  • Wanderlust
  • Fernweh
  • Zugzwang
  • Ohrwurm
  • sturmfrei
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araralc t1_je7bqrb wrote

Yeah, usually the "this word doesn't exist in another language" is about concepts or other things that are culturally influenced. But somehow I've seen a bunch of those lists or mentions that are actually just a simple German composite that can be translated into other languages if you don't make "it gotta be a single word" a rule. So like, completely translatable stuff. I always saw those and would think it was like saying "starlight" isn't a word in Portuguese because "luz estelar" are two words, but with bigger merges.

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