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Those Wonderful German Compounds
Those Wonderful German Compounds, wherein your winning Scrabble words for the next six months can be found.
It’s been a long time since the fascination with German took hold and nearly as long since that language’s legendary and oft-mocked propensity to generate staggering numbers of compound words of nearly unlimited length became one of the great pleasures of my life. I love compounds and I love German compounds especially because they are so lexically transparent, so often poetic and sometimes even linguistically efficient. Let’s take some simple examples, like the ones that got me started:
- Waschbär = literally “bear that washes” meaning “raccoon”
- Schildkröte = literally “toad with shield” meaning “turtle”
- Rotkehlchen = literally “little red throat” meaning “European robin”
- “Dickichtwaldsänger” = literally “singer in the forest thicket” (English in this case is not nearly so creative, giving us instead “McGillivray’s Warbler”)
There is a sort of playful and poetic imagination at work in everyday vocabulary in German. No surprise that these words came from the Germanic language well from which the ancestors of German, Dutch, English and Scandinavian-speaking peoples drew kennings like “hronrad” meaning “whale road” for “sea” or “heofoncandel” meaning “sky-candle” for “sun.” Kennings and compounds are related forms of language, with the former being allowed to stray into farther reaches of circumlocution, euphemism, and mythological allusion where compounds are at least expected to have some relation to the lexicon without also needing a “who’s who of Valhalla” to understand them.
Some are immediately clear to the hearer and even have commonly-used English analogues, such as:
- “Totmannsschalter” = “dead man’s switch”
- “Bauernhund” = “farm dog”
- “Bauernkatze” = “farm cat”
But the world of human interactions is where we get the real fun:
- “Bierlaune” = “the mood in which one wants a beer”. See also the adjective “biergelaunt” = “in the mood for a beer”
- “Dönerlaune” = “the mood in which one wants the Turkish equivalent of a gyro,” See also the adjective “dönergelaunt”
- “Kaffeelaune” = “the mood in which one wants coffee.” See also the adjective, “endloserkaffeebechergelaunt” = “in the mood for an endless cup of coffee” which generally describes us around here.
By now you have no doubt figured out that the lexeme “Laune” means “mood” and can be suffixed onto just about any other noun you can imagine. The same applies to “Wut” = “rage, mania, madness,” or “Lust” = “lust, desire,” and “Freude” = “joy.” This means you get to make words like:
- “Sammelwut” = “collecting mania”
- “Lesewut” = “reading mania”
- “Arbeitswut” = “working mania”
- “Spiellust”= “joy of acting” in drama or “joy of play” in children, see also “Spielfreude”
- “Forschungslust” = “joy of research, desire to research”
- “Entdeckungsfreude” = “joy at making a discovery”
- “Mordlust” = “lust for killing” (what may arise in one’s heart when one realises that an arch-rival in the lab down the hall just felt the “Entdeckungsfreude” that has eluded one for years)
- “Leselust” = “lust for reading,” see also “Lesefreude” = “joy of reading”
There is also the less common “Wetterfeigheit” = “weather cowardice,” a psychological affliction most characteristic of Texans and other southerners in the US, causing them to freak completely out when there is a hint of a suggestion that it might snow somewhere within the borders of the state.
You have probably also noticed that “Freude,” “Lust,” and even “Feigheit” are among the well-nigh infinitely combinable mental state descriptors that exists both as a lexemes in their own right and as very productive suffixes. If there is a possible mental state combining basic human emotions like joy, rage, desire, fear, anxiety or even boredom with objects or activities, German has a compound word for it. It goes way beyond “Fremdschämen” and “Schadenfreude” here.
But it’s not all amusing words for emotional states. Some of them describe industrial tools, like “Heißkanaletagenspritzgießwerkzeug”= “hot runner stack injection mould”
Of course, some compounds describe common and beloved domestic fowl who are a tasty food source, such as “Truthahn” = “Turkey.” Yes, this is a compound consisting of “Trut,” which refers to the call the bird makes (and is thought to be either an attempt at representing the bird’s territorial noise or related to the word for “threaten” (though it could also be related to a derisive word for talkative old women “Truhte.” both origins are disputed) and “hahn” meaning “rooster.” Yes, there is a “Truthenne” as well.
Everyday life is full of little lexical treasures like these. For instance:
- “Wildunfall” = an accident involving a wild animal
- “Raureif” = hoar frost
- “Rehkitz” = fawn, but literally “kid of a doe.” Yup, a cognate for “kid” referring to the young of hoofed animals of a capricious nature exists in German.
The three can be connected: “Distracted by the cold, almost other-worldly beauty of the Raureif, I failed to see the Rehkitz spring out in front of my car and had a Wildunfall.”
And, since summer is here, it’s time to think about that “Familienschwimmausflug” = “family swimming excursion,” as in what we did took one June day last year. We had just about perfect timing, right before the “Wolkenbruch” = “cloudburst” that poured water “eimerweise” = “in buckets” over the “Naturfreibad” = “outdoor swimming facility fed from a natural source; natural outdoor pool” as we were just leaving.
Then there are some absolutely wonderful compounds from the fields of finance and insurance, like: “Vermögensschadenshaftpflichtversicherung” = “third-part financial loss liability insurance” or “directors and officers financial liability insurance.” Investors and accounts get to have all sorts of fun with compounds. If you belong to either class of person, you might occasionally have to deal with the provisions of the “Gewinnabgrenzungsaufzeichnungsverordnung” = “ordinance on recording profit allocation” and the “Zinsertragsbesteuerungsabkommen”=”Interest Earnings Taxation Agreement,” e.g., between Germany and the US. There’s one such agreement for every country. And of course there’s this lovely entry to the German accountant’s lexicon that is sure to thrill young and old alike: “Bilanzrichtlinieumsetzungsgesetz” = “Balance Sheet Guideline Implementation Act” or BilRUG, not to be confused with a Balrog … probably….
Then there are compound words that are unappealing chimeras of German and English, like:
“Handyverlust” = “loss of a cell phone,” with “Handy” being German slang for cell phone, apparently having been a slang word in British English for about five minutes at the time when the devices were just becoming popular. But that has never been confirmed.
There is also, of course, “Smartphoneverlust” = “loss of a smartphone” and both of course can be insured against, which yield “Handyverlustversicherung” and “Smartphoneverlustversicherung.” But that’s just the shallow end of the pond. To go deep into insurance-related compounds, you have to consider that factory operators here would be well-advised to conclude a “Maschinenbetriebsunterbrechungsversicherung” = “insurance policy against interruption of machine operations,” and when they get their notice in the mail confirming that they have have concluded such a policy, it will be called a “Maschinenbetriebsunterbrechungsversicherungsabschlussbestätigung.” No kidding.
But science is as one would expect another area rich in compounds, such as “Glimmentladungsspektrometer” = “glow discharge spectrometer,” or “Raketentriebwerksteuerung” = “rocket engine control,” or the vastly simpler “Lichtbeute” = “light yield.” The problem for the hunter of lexical monstrosities is that natural sciences tend to be highly international in character, and German tends to either loan-translate compounds from other languages, e.g., “Klimawandel” = “climate change” and “Treibhauseffekt” = “Greenhouse Effect,” or the international community uses terms developed by scientists here and whose English equivalents are largely immediately transparent, e.g., “Dopplerpuls” = “Doppler pulse,” “Quantenverschränkung” = “quantum entanglement,” or “Photonenkupplung” = “photon coupling.” This makes reading even advanced scientific work in German easier than one would expect, but less rewarding as form of linguistic safari hunting.
At least these fields are low on “Zeiträuber” = “time-robbers” and tend not to be “Friedensstehler” = “thieves of peace.” Or was that Zeitstehler and Friedensräuber?
But, no, our Scrabble boards are not ten feet across. More’s the pity.
Published in Group Writing
That was heap big fun. English sort of gave that up a few centuries back and went to phrases instead of freight-car words.
This conversation is an entry in our Group Writing Series under May’s theme of The Power of Words, and they do have the power to fascinate and the power to make us laugh. If this has reminded you of any adventures you have had with the awe-inspiring powers that words bring into our lives, perhaps you might consider signing up to share your story?
And think of how many words you can combine with “-sucht” or “-süchtig”.
And my favorite is “Handschuh” – somehow it just brings up a strange mental image, especially since shoes don’t have fingers.
There are no umlauts in Scrabble.
That’s why the fine point black Sharpie pen was invented…
If you look at a word by word translation of German, the grammar is horrible, leading to my theory that the reason there are so many compound words is that it is so difficult to actually say anything, that whenever anyone successfully expresses a new thought, they immediately create the new word to capture the meaning.
I am currently teaching myself German, and I know what you mean – the farther I get the more I just love the sound of it. And the logic.
I have an idea for a one-panel cartoon which I will never draw, so I’ll share it here where somebody might appreciate it:
It shows two hunters down in the corner, looking up at a flock of geese passing overhead. But intead of a V pattern, they are flying in an F pattern.
One says to the other “Hmm, they must be German geese.”
There is always very practical knowledge to be gained from Ricochet members.
The New Yorker might buy it, and then you’d never be able to show your face around respectable towns again.
It isn’t so much that the grammar is horrible, but that it is encoded differently. Much of the grammar is passed through word positioning and case endings, rather than how we do it in English.
I’ve always loved this aspect of German. It strikes me as wonderfully childlike. Who but a child would call a hospital a Krankenhaus (sick people house)? But my all-time new favorite is this one that I came across online recently:
I like the compound words which are more than the literal sum of their components while still being logical.
So “alt”=”old” and “klug”=clever, but “altklug”=”precocious”.
Similarly, ‘Ruf”=”reputation” and “Mord”=”murder”, but “Rufmord”=”libel”.
Bei uns schon!
And in German we only have six verb tenses, not eighteen with the various tenses of the continuous and emphatic. Way simpler than English.
Ich spiele Tennis= I play tennis, I do play tennis, I am playing tennis.
It’s a by-product of Latin grammar. They deliberately made the sentence structure more like classical Latin in the 18th-19th centuries. The Austrians are the worst about it.
And we all know about those Austrians.
Sorry I still order my BMW parts in the easy to understand original English, thank you.
I used to date a Swiss guy when I was in my 20s. Even he laughed at Swiss German (Schweitzerdeutsch)
So the Alt-Right is really the old right?
Ruhe, du.
They really like singing on hills?
Hahaha I mean Der Haha
(Pic of bad Austrian removed.) Austrian.
Edit: I didn’t mean to derail the thread and apologize to @hartmannvonaue for it. Back to the fun of the German language.
Du bist sehr lustig. Danke.
Bitte!
This one might as well go too. Back to Deutsch!
“…in a German-speaking village in the Swiss Alps, I bought a packet of paper tissues emblazoned, in German, with the proud marketing boast Durchschnupfsicher! As often happens in Switzerland, the package was multilingual, and the term was variously rendered in English, Italian, and French, as ‘three-ply,’ assorbente, and résistent; the English stressed the product’s structure, the Italian its absorbency, the French its toughness. But the German term contained all three: Compounded of three separate words, it literally means ‘sneeze-through-proof.’ A concept of singular power.”
(Sorry, some bad HTML formatting in the article) –
https://www.thenationalherald.com/455/greek-to-me/
As the temperature is now 39 degrees C. — and more of the same for the rest of the coming week, I am emphatically biergelaunt, and had better go stock up.
One can find many videos on the Internet dedicated to the marvelous German language: