Why does German favor long compound words?
Richard Fangnail
to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
phog...@abo.fi
Richard Fangnail kirjoitti:
> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
It never ceases to amaze me how able you monolingual English speakers
are to construe your particular linguistic prejudices as "human
nature". "Human" does not mean Anglo-American.
There are lots more languages out there which at least to some extent
"favour long compound words". My native language,. Finnish, comes up
with lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an
actually used word (not a facetious proposal), which to me is quite
easy to read and understand. It means somebody who is studying to be a
non-commissioned officer with mechanic skills, specializing in the
repairs and maintenance of aircraft jet propulsion turbines.
Personally, I think it is human nature to want your written language
have some resemblance to how it is pronounced, i.e. work much more
logically than English does.
Nigel Greenwood
phog...@abo.fi wrote:
> My native language,. Finnish, comes up
> with lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an
> actually used word (not a facetious proposal), which to me is quite
> easy to read and understand. It means somebody who is studying to be a
> non-commissioned officer with mechanic skills, specializing in the
> repairs and maintenance of aircraft jet propulsion turbines.
A young Finnish student I know
Will soon be a skilled NCO.
With the training he gets
He'll maintain & fix jets
So they land with precision on snow.
Nigel
--
ScriptMaster language resources (Chinese/Modern & Classical
Greek/IPA/Persian/Russian/Turkish):
http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk
LEE Sau Dan
Richard> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it
Richard> just human nature to want a space between the parts, so
Richard> it's easier to read?
No. I don't think it's human nature.
Chinese has lots of compound words much longer than German. Do you
know how many people on Earth know Chinese?
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
phog...@abo.fi
LEE Sau Dan kirjoitti:
> >>>>> "Richard" == Richard Fangnail <richard...@excite.com> writes:
>
> Richard> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it
> Richard> just human nature to want a space between the parts, so
> Richard> it's easier to read?
>
> No. I don't think it's human nature.
>
> Chinese has lots of compound words much longer than German.
Now THAT is interesting. Would you be bothered to tell more about
compounding in Chinese? Being shamefully ignorant of Chinese, I'd like
to shed some of my ignorance.
phog...@abo.fi
Nigel Greenwood kirjoitti:
> phog...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > My native language,. Finnish, comes up
> > with lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an
> > actually used word (not a facetious proposal), which to me is quite
> > easy to read and understand. It means somebody who is studying to be a
> > non-commissioned officer with mechanic skills, specializing in the
> > repairs and maintenance of aircraft jet propulsion turbines.
>
> A young Finnish student I know
> Will soon be a skilled NCO.
> With the training he gets
> He'll maintain & fix jets
> So they land with precision on snow.
Yes, that is more or less the idea. :)
Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim
Richard Fangnail schrieb:
> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
Germanic tribes were hunters (meat eaters: consider the popular German
sausage) and had no time for long multi-syllabic words such as English:
convenient, comfortable, beautiful. These words belong to people of
Romance origin who have at least three hours time for dinner (the
French). By contrast the Germans only need five minutes. Even the
Romance comaprison of adjectives is longer: more convenient compared to
Germanic: smaller. smallest. Germanic words are short and full of
energy: come, go. The problem with the present day German is not the
length of words but making compounds of at least three words:
Unahängigkeitserklarung. I agree this is indeed not human nature
particularly when you want to start a new line. In Addition, Germans
spend a lot of time and energy speculating about whether to write a
certain word as a long compound or separae words. In order to save the
energy (energy is expensive nowadays) I suggest avoiding long compound
words and making German more human or go back to the roots.
Helmut Richter
> Richard Fangnail kirjoitti:
>
> > You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> > to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
The English option to write words apart is *one* of the reason why English
has so many "garden-path" sentences:
The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi.
(example by S. Pinker)
Would the compound "cotton-clothing" always be written with a hyphen or as
one word, the above sentence could be parsed correctly right away.
> [...]
> Personally, I think it is human nature to want your written language
> have some resemblance to how it is pronounced, i.e. work much more
> logically than English does.
The easiest-to-read version would be using hyphens: then the joints are
marked but the pronunciation and intonation can still be the
language-specific one for compound words as distinct from separate words.
I do not know why hyphens are discouraged in the standard spelling of many
languages, compared to separate words or real compounds.
--
Helmut Richter
Peter T. Daniels
But with initial stress.
Peter T. Daniels
Helmut Richter wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, phog...@abo.fi wrote:
>
> > Richard Fangnail kirjoitti:
> >
> > > You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> > > to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
>
> The English option to write words apart is *one* of the reason why English
> has so many "garden-path" sentences:
>
> The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi.
> (example by S. Pinker)
>
> Would the compound "cotton-clothing" always be written with a hyphen or as
> one word, the above sentence could be parsed correctly right away.
A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
Peter T. Daniels
(LSD has had great difficulty with the word "word" in the past.)
Helmut Richter
> A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
> not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
>
> Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
So "cotton" is an adjective here? I understood it as a part of a compound
noun, probably because "cotton clothing" (i.e. clothing made of cotton) is
a compound ("Baumwollkleidung") in my language.
--
Helmut Richter
Helmut Richter
Well, even if we accept Chinese words with more than one root morpheme or
syllable as compounds (which is not unreasonable even when the meaning of
such a compound can no longer be inferred from the meaning of its
constituents), I would be interested in learning an example meeting the
criterion "much longer than German".
--
Helmut Richter
phog...@abo.fi
Peter T. Daniels kirjoitti:
Yes. However, now that I try to take the word into my mouth, I produce
secondary stresses thus-like:
léntokonesùihkuturbiinimòottoriàpumekaanikkoàliupseerioppilas
lento = flight
kone = machine -> lentokone aeroplane, "flight-machine"
suihku = jet
turbiini = turbine -> suihkuturbiini, "jet turbine"
moottori = motor, engine -> suihkuturbiinimoottori "jet propulsion
engine"
apu = assistance
mekaanikko = mechanic, engineer -> apumekaanikko "assistant mechanic"
ali = sub-, under
upseeri = officer -> aliupseeri "non-commissioned officer"
oppilas = student, pupil, cadet, trainee
from oppi "learning", oppia "to learn".
erilar
"Richard Fangnail" <richard...@excite.com> wrote:
> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
Not for Germans nor people fluent in the language. English tends to
coin a new word you have to look up when it doesn't use a phrase. German
just collapses the phrase, so you have the description right there,
taking up less space 8-)
--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar),
philologist, biblioholic medievalist
http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
erilar
"Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim" <Jdib...@cashette.com> wrote:
> Richard Fangnail schrieb:
>
> > You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> > to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
>
> Germanic tribes were hunters (meat eaters: consider the popular German
> sausage) and had no time for long multi-syllabic words such as English:
> convenient, comfortable, beautiful. These words belong to people of
> Romance origin who have at least three hours time for dinner (the
> French). By contrast the Germans only need five minutes. Even the
> Romance comaprison of adjectives is longer: more convenient compared to
> Germanic: smaller. smallest. Germanic words are short and full of
> energy: come, go. The problem with the present day German is not the
> length of words but making compounds of at least three words:
> Unahängigkeitserklarung. I agree this is indeed not human nature
> particularly when you want to start a new line. In Addition, Germans
> spend a lot of time and energy speculating about whether to write a
> certain word as a long compound or separae words. In order to save the
> energy (energy is expensive nowadays) I suggest avoiding long compound
> words and making German more human or go back to the roots.
prolonged giggles 8-)
erilar
phog...@abo.fi wrote:
loud and sustained applause!!
I spent many years of my life trying to cure monolingual teenagers 8-)
erilar
<Pine.LNX.4.63.06...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>,
Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
Ah, but German is a more rational language than my native English 8-)
Paul D
> There are lots more languages out there which at least to some extent
> "favour long compound words". My native language,. Finnish, comes up
> with lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an
> actually used word (not a facetious proposal), which to me is quite
> easy to read and understand. It means somebody who is studying to be a
> non-commissioned officer with mechanic skills, specializing in the
> repairs and maintenance of aircraft jet propulsion turbines.
In a Finnish-based creole, would this end up pluralized with
reduplication? I.e.
"lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilaslentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas"
O-V R:nen
> In a Finnish-based creole, would this end up pluralized with
> reduplication? I.e.
> "lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilaslentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas"
I think a creole would be more likely to pick up the more everyday
variant and end up with "apumeisseliapumeisseli" (literally 'assistant
screwdriver') instead.
noesy_parker
@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
Whatever compound words LSD may be thinking of, they are of no relevance to
this discussion unless he writes Chinese without spaces between characters.
Or maybe he consider words like "male" (field + labour), good (woman +
child) as compound words.
Stefano MAC:GREGOR
> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
Turn the question around: Why does English insist on putting a space
in the middle of what is, to a German, a single word? Isn't it just
human nature to want to see a word all in one piece?
--
Stefano
Joachim Pense
And Baumwollkleidung could equally well be interpreted as something
that clothes cotton and as clothing made from cotton, except that only
one of the two interpretations normally makes sense in real life.
Joachim
Joachim Pense
> In article
> <Pine.LNX.4.63.06...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>,
> Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>> A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
>>> not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
>>>
>>> Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
>>
>> So "cotton" is an adjective here? I understood it as a part of a compound
>> noun, probably because "cotton clothing" (i.e. clothing made of cotton) is
>> a compound ("Baumwollkleidung") in my language.
>
> Ah, but German is a more rational language than my native English 8-)
Really? Then give me the reason why it is not "Baumwollskleidung",
"Baumwollenkleidung", "Baumwollekleidung", "Baumswollenkleiendung"?
Joachim
Joachim Pense
> In article <1162441102.0...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "Richard Fangnail" <richard...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
>> to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
>
> Not for Germans nor people fluent in the language. English tends to
> coin a new word you have to look up when it doesn't use a phrase. German
> just collapses the phrase, so you have the description right there,
> taking up less space 8-)
I think it is a deficiency of the German orthography not to mark the
boundary of compounds - particular in view of the fact that we
capitalize our nouns to increase readability. Some centuries ago, it
was more common to use hyphens (typically double=hyphens), and even
InnerWordInitials. The latter is slowly coming back, maybe through the
influence of programming languages. Advertising is also fond of it.
BTW, the two shapes of the lower case s in German (a "long" one
resembling an f, and the usual form) also served as an aid to separate
compunds visually, because the short form was reserved for the end of
the word (and the compound), including a connecting s.
Joachim
António Marques
I don't know that, but that is semantics anyway, not syntax.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Frank W. Steiner
> There are lots more languages out there which at least to some extent
> "favour long compound words". My native language,. Finnish, comes up with
> lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an actually
> used word (not a facetious proposal),
That's totally different from what it is done in German. In German you
just run together words that have a meaning of their own, whereas in
Finnish you append together unit upon unit, but most (each?) of those
units makes no sense unless integrated in a word.
In a nutshell, what you do in Finnish you can do in Finnish and similar
languages, whereas what is done in German could in principle be done in
any Indoeuropean language. In English one would write "Ten times European
cup football winner team Real Madrid". What one does in German is
equivalent to this, only removing the blanks (and maybe internal capitals).
Helmut Richter
> Really? Then give me the reason why it is not "Baumwollskleidung",
> "Baumwollenkleidung", "Baumwollekleidung", "Baumswollenkleiendung"?
The last one would be a special case of bran manure.
--
Helmut Richter
O-V R:nen
> On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:00:49 -0800, phoglund wrote:
> > There are lots more languages out there which at least to some extent
> > "favour long compound words". My native language,. Finnish, comes up with
> > lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an actually
> > used word (not a facetious proposal),
> That's totally different from what it is done in German. In German you
> just run together words that have a meaning of their own, whereas in
> Finnish you append together unit upon unit, but most (each?) of those
> units makes no sense unless integrated in a word.
You are confusing Finnish with Greenlandic or whatever. The example
above is simply a string of ordinary nouns after one another (the only
exception being the prefix/adposition "ali-", generally 'sub-', here
'non-commissioned [officer]' from "Unteroffizier" prob via Swedish).
O-V R:nen
> > That's totally different from what it is done in German. In German you
> > just run together words that have a meaning of their own, whereas in
> > Finnish you append together unit upon unit, but most (each?) of those
> > units makes no sense unless integrated in a word.
> You are confusing Finnish with Greenlandic or whatever.
(Or thinking about derivation rather than compounding.)
Nigel Greenwood
Frank W. Steiner wrote:
> On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:00:49 -0800, phoglund wrote:
>
> > There are lots more languages out there which at least to some extent
> > "favour long compound words". My native language,. Finnish, comes up with
> > lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an actually
> > used word (not a facetious proposal),
>
> That's totally different from what it is done in German. In German you
> just run together words that have a meaning of their own, whereas in
> Finnish you append together unit upon unit, but most (each?) of those
> units makes no sense unless integrated in a word.
But this is completely wrong! As phogl of Åbo/Turku (sorry, don't
know your name) has explained in great detail, each unit of that
monstrous compound has an easily understood meaning & can be used on
its own. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the compounds are in fact
German calques: eg lento-kone = Flug-zeug (my hyphens).
Permit me to be slightly sceptical about phogl's claim that this word
is actually used. Well, I suppose it might occur on a notice at an
airfield, but it's hardly the sort of word you could casually drop into
a conversation in a Helsinki bar -- or even one in Turku!
Nigel
--
ScriptMaster language resources (Chinese/Modern & Classical
Greek/IPA/Persian/Russian/Turkish):
http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk
Oliver Cromm
> Helmut Richter wrote:
>> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, phog...@abo.fi wrote:
>>
>>> Richard Fangnail kirjoitti:
>>>
>>> > You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
>>> > to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
>>
>> The English option to write words apart is *one* of the reason why English
>> has so many "garden-path" sentences:
>>
>> The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi.
>> (example by S. Pinker)
>>
>> Would the compound "cotton-clothing" always be written with a hyphen or as
>> one word, the above sentence could be parsed correctly right away.
>
> A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
> not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
Right. And if that would always be written with a hyphen, you would know
that in the above sentence, there is no compound.
--
Smith & Wesson--the original point and click interface
Oliver Cromm
> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>> A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
>> not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
>>
>> Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
>
> So "cotton" is an adjective here?
Many English speakers name it an adjective, just because it is used
attributively. But it lacks pretty much any other feature of adjectives,
so I view that way of speaking as a confusion of form and function.
--
The Internet? Is that thing still around? - Homer Simpson
Joachim Pense
But how does Peter's example work? Is there a syntactic reason that
cotton-clothing means clothing for cotton and cotton clothing means
clothing of cotton?
Joachim
Joachim Pense
It has been becoming very popular for two decades or so to put spaces
into the middle of compound words in German. I don't know how this
usage arose - it seems like some people conciously decided to separate
words from now on.
Joachim
Peter T. Daniels
noesy_parker wrote:
> phog...@abo.fi wrote in news:1162465808.076330.122200
> @m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>
> >
> > LEE Sau Dan kirjoitti:
> >
> >> >>>>> "Richard" == Richard Fangnail <richard...@excite.com> writes:
> >>
> >> Richard> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it
> >> Richard> just human nature to want a space between the parts, so
> >> Richard> it's easier to read?
> >>
> >> No. I don't think it's human nature.
> >>
> >> Chinese has lots of compound words much longer than German.
> >
> > Now THAT is interesting. Would you be bothered to tell more about
> > compounding in Chinese? Being shamefully ignorant of Chinese, I'd like
> > to shed some of my ignorance.
>
>
> Whatever compound words LSD may be thinking of, they are of no relevance to
> this discussion unless he writes Chinese without spaces between characters.
Maybe that's what he meant, as spaces are _never_ written between
characters.
> Or maybe he consider words like "male" (field + labour), good (woman +
> child) as compound words.
Now it's you that's having trouble with the word "word" ... you just
described the folk etymologies of a couple of characters, but not the
composition of the morphemes they stand for.
Peter T. Daniels
That stress pattern is even worse than Hungarian, which I don't think
can do anything nearly so polysynthetically baroque, but does tend to
tail off into nothingness along the way.
Peter T. Daniels
Helmut Richter wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> > A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
> > not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
> >
> > Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
>
> So "cotton" is an adjective here? I understood it as a part of a compound
> noun, probably because "cotton clothing" (i.e. clothing made of cotton) is
> a compound ("Baumwollkleidung") in my language.
One way you can tell it's not a compound is that it has equal stress --
cf. "black bird" and "blackbird."
As to whether it "is" an adjective, that rather depends on your theory
of grammar. It can't take -er -est or more/most, so it's not
morphologically an adjective, so it's along the lines of [[N]n]adj, if
you like doing X-bar syntax (which came along, fortunately, just after
I no longer had to take syntax courses).
Peter T. Daniels
Orthographic tradition!
Which here reflects stress patterns.
noesy_parker
news:1162492127....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
>
> noesy_parker wrote:
>> phog...@abo.fi wrote in news:1162465808.076330.122200
>> @m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>>
>> Whatever compound words LSD may be thinking of, they are of no
>> relevance to this discussion unless he writes Chinese without spaces
>> between characters.
>
> Maybe that's what he meant, as spaces are _never_ written between
> characters.
How do you write a space? Anyway, I meant the characters are discrete
and not joined up. Chineseisnotwrittenlikethis. Each character is
identifiably separate.
>
>> Or maybe he consider words like "male" (field + labour), good (woman
>> + child) as compound words.
>
> Now it's you that's having trouble with the word "word" ... you just
> described the folk etymologies of a couple of characters, but not the
> composition of the morphemes they stand for.
Folk etymologies, how dare you! It is one of the basic principles of
how Chinese characters are constructed. Three trees (Sen1) - forest,
three women (Jian1) - debauchery. A more complicated example - "learn"
(Xue2) is made up a a child sitting under a roof, two hands holding
something (an ear of rice grains? I can't remember). It suggests a
child learning an act (thrashing grains?).
I'm not confusing word with charcter, since "male" (nan2) and "good"
(hao3) are single characters that correspond directly to single words.
Tim Smith
"noesy_parker" <noesy_...@clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Folk etymologies, how dare you! It is one of the basic principles of
> how Chinese characters are constructed. Three trees (Sen1) - forest,
> three women (Jian1) - debauchery. A more complicated example - "learn"
> (Xue2) is made up a a child sitting under a roof, two hands holding
> something (an ear of rice grains? I can't remember). It suggests a
> child learning an act (thrashing grains?).
>
> I'm not confusing word with charcter, since "male" (nan2) and "good"
> (hao3) are single characters that correspond directly to single words.
How are new words handled? For example, consider English. Suppose you
visited some new (to you) city in England, and found there was a
regional food, called blerkbo, which you had never before heard of. You
are taught to speak the word, but no one tells you how it is spelled.
(1) You can make a good guess. Even if you to guess wrong, and came up
with something like blurqbeau, and then you wrote that, the people that
knew blerkbo would know what you were meant, and
(2) If you were reading the local paper that night in your hotel room,
and saw a story announcing the start of the local blerkbo festival,
you'd be able to read and understand it.
How would this be handled in China?
--
--Tim Smith
Stefano MAC:GREGOR
> It has been becoming very popular for two decades or so to put spaces
> into the middle of compound words in German. I don't know how this
> usage arose - it seems like some people conciously decided to separate
> words from now on.
Sometimes I see addional Großschreibung in the middles of words for
apparently the same reason.
--
Stefano
Frank W. Steiner
> "Frank W. Steiner" <ste...@hotmail.com> writes:
>> On Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:00:49 -0800, phoglund wrote:
>
>> > There are lots more languages out there which at least to some extent
>> > "favour long compound words". My native language,. Finnish, comes up
>> > with lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, an
>> > actually used word (not a facetious proposal),
>
>> That's totally different from what it is done in German. In German you
>> just run together words that have a meaning of their own, whereas in
>> Finnish you append together unit upon unit, but most (each?) of those
>> units makes no sense unless integrated in a word.
>
> You are confusing Finnish with Greenlandic or whatever. The example above
> is simply a string of ordinary nouns after one another
That's not the usual way for Finnish to create its long words though.
Peter T. Daniels
No, you said that the "word" 'male' is (field+labor), which obviously
it isn't.
The vast majority of characters that are supposedly semantic-semantic
compounds are in fact not; they are phonetic-semantic like almost all
Chinese characters. Three trees (I don't know about three women)
obviously is one of the few true semantic-semantic compounds; but it's
very likely that if you consult the history of the language, you'll
find that 'learn' is not what you said, but a radical+phonetic.
Mike Wright
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
> news:1162492127....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
>
>>noesy_parker wrote:
>>
>>>phog...@abo.fi wrote in news:1162465808.076330.122200
>>>@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>>>
>>>Whatever compound words LSD may be thinking of, they are of no
>>>relevance to this discussion unless he writes Chinese without spaces
>>>between characters.
>>
>>Maybe that's what he meant, as spaces are _never_ written between
>>characters.
>
> How do you write a space? Anyway, I meant the characters are discrete
> and not joined up. Chineseisnotwrittenlikethis. Each character is
> identifiably separate.
Except in some grass writing, where coolth is more important than
legibility. I agree with your point here, though.
>>>Or maybe he consider words like "male" (field + labour), good (woman
>>>+ child) as compound words.
>>
>>Now it's you that's having trouble with the word "word" ... you just
>>described the folk etymologies of a couple of characters, but not the
>>composition of the morphemes they stand for.
>
> Folk etymologies, how dare you! It is one of the basic principles of
> how Chinese characters are constructed. Three trees (Sen1) - forest,
> three women (Jian1) - debauchery.
But it's never quite that simple.
Once again, I'll bring up examples from William G. Boltz, _The Origin
and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System_. I'll use Pinyin
romanization in angle brackets to represent the morphemes in the spoken
language, rather than fiddle with Old Chinese reconstructions, even
though the reconstructions make phonetic correspondences much more
obvious than they are in modern Mandarin.
A major point is that in the early stages of Chinese writing, a single
graph could represent more than one word/morpheme. For example, the
original version of 目, which was used to write <mu4> ("eye") was also
used to write <kan4> ("look") and <jian4> ("see"). Eventually additional
elements were added to produce unambiguous versions of <kan4> 看 and
<jian> 見, with 目 being restricted thereafter to the writing of <mu4>.
In his discussion on pages 107-109, Boltz demonstrates that a similar
situation existed involving the graph 女 <nu3/ru2> ("woman", "you"). The
earliest forms of this character involved a kneeling woman. In addition
to being used as a graph for <nu3>, 女 was also used for another
morpheme, <an1> ("kneeling", "seated", "settled"--later modified to 安,
which has extended meanings related to safety, as well as unrelated uses
as an interrogative--and which has been explained as "a woman under a
roof represents peace"), and appears to function as a phonetic element
in a number of characters, including 奻 and 姦.
Although he doesn't deal with <nan2> ("male"), he does show (pages
110-113) that the "child" element 子 <zi4> in 好 <hao3/hao4> ("good",
"be fond of") appears as a phonetic element in characters related to a
word for "childbirth", and that it fits as a phonetic element in 好.
> A more complicated example - "learn"
> (Xue2) is made up a a child sitting under a roof, two hands holding
> something (an ear of rice grains? I can't remember).
An abacus, I believe.
> It suggests a
> child learning an act (thrashing grains?).
The earliest form of this character has two x-shapes, one above the
other, over a roof. (See Boltz, page 8.) Sort of like this:
x
x
^
/ \
There is no child there at all--nor any hands. Although Boltz doesn't
deal with <xue2>, it looks to me as though the "childbirth" reading of
子 works well as a phonetic there, too.
If anyone doubts Boltz's conclusions, I suggest reading the book and
seeing what you think after that, rather than relying on my summary of
his detailed discussions.
The book was originally published in 1994, and he mentions in the
Preface to the Second Printing (2003) that there is much new material
available since then, and that there are points in the book that might
need revision or expansion. I'm hoping that he'll come out with a sequel
before I get too old to read it.
> I'm not confusing word with charcter, since "male" (nan2) and "good"
> (hao3) are single characters that correspond directly to single words.
--
Mike Wright
http://www.raccoonbend.com
noesy_parker
news:12kksg3...@corp.supernews.com:
Don't know how reliable Wiki is, but it gives the etymology of "male" as
"man providing the strength for agricultural labour."
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%B7
>
>> A more complicated example - "learn"
>> (Xue2) is made up a a child sitting under a roof, two hands holding
>> something (an ear of rice grains? I can't remember).
>
> An abacus, I believe.
>
>> It suggests a
>> child learning an act (thrashing grains?).
>
> The earliest form of this character has two x-shapes, one above the
> other, over a roof. (See Boltz, page 8.) Sort of like this:
>
> x
> x
> ^
> / \
>
> There is no child there at all--nor any hands. Although Boltz doesn't
> deal with <xue2>,
If I'm wrong, I'll blame my teacher who used this to illustrate how
characters are constructed.
> it looks to me as though the "childbirth" reading of
> 子 works well as a phonetic there, too.
How so?
> If anyone doubts Boltz's conclusions, I suggest reading the book and
> seeing what you think after that, rather than relying on my summary of
> his detailed discussions.
Interesting post. Thanks very much. I'll get Boltz's book and have a look
when I have the time.
noesy_parker
> No, you said that the "word" 'male' is (field+labor), which obviously
> it isn't.
Some people obviously think it is to say it is so on Wiki. Now you may
have a low opiniion of Wiki, but would I trust what you say on this rather
than someone else who might know better than you?
>
> The vast majority of characters that are supposedly semantic-semantic
> compounds are in fact not;
Some estimates put it at 13%, not a low number.
In any case, are you saying that "woman" cease to have any association with
"woman" when it is used as a radical? Why is it used as a radical then
rather then say "grass" or "worm"?
LEE Sau Dan
Tim> How are new words handled? For example, consider English.
Tim> Suppose you visited some new (to you) city in England, and
Tim> found there was a regional food, called blerkbo, which you
Tim> had never before heard of. You are taught to speak the word,
Tim> but no one tells you how it is spelled.
Tim> (1) You can make a good guess.
We sometimes do that for Chinese.
Tim> (2) If you were reading the local paper that night in your
Tim> hotel room, and saw a story announcing the start of the local
Tim> blerkbo festival, you'd be able to read and understand it.
We sometimes do that for Chinese.
But more often, in Chinese, the words are very transparent. New words
are usually invented by compounding, quite unlike your example
"blerkbo". It may be called a "local style pancake" (if it looks like
pancake) or "<place-name> fish" (if fish is the main ingredient) or
"<personal-name> vegetable" (if that's vegetable), etc. So, having a
knowledge of the frequently used root words, it's not difficult to
know how it is written.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
LEE Sau Dan
Peter> No, you said that the "word" 'male' is (field+labor), which
Peter> obviously it isn't.
Peter> The vast majority of characters that are supposedly
Peter> semantic-semantic compounds are in fact not; they are
Peter> phonetic-semantic like almost all Chinese characters.
Which part is the phonetic in the character for "male", then?
LEE Sau Dan
Jamshid> The problem with the present day German is not the length
Jamshid> of words but making compounds of at least three words:
Jamshid> Unahängigkeitserklarung.
I don't have any problems with this word, even though you misspelt it.
(There is a "b" between "a" and "h".)
And I had no problems the first time I heard Bundesverfassungsgericht.
I could even extend it to Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgebäude or
Bundesverfassungsgerichtsverurteilung.
Jamshid> I agree this is indeed not human nature particularly
Jamshid> when you want to start a new line.
I found it completely natural.
Jamshid> In Addition, Germans spend a lot of time and energy
Jamshid> speculating about whether to write a certain word as a
Jamshid> long compound or separae words.
Do they? Learning German as L2, I don't have such a problem.
Jamshid> In order to save the energy (energy is expensive
Jamshid> nowadays) I suggest avoiding long compound words and
Jamshid> making German more human or go back to the roots.
As I said before, Chinese make much longer compounds (in terms of the
root-word count). No Chinese seem to have any problem with it.
LEE Sau Dan
>> [...] Personally, I think it is human nature to want your
>> written language have some resemblance to how it is pronounced,
>> i.e. work much more logically than English does.
Helmut> The easiest-to-read version would be using hyphens: then
Helmut> the joints are marked but the pronunciation and intonation
Helmut> can still be the language-specific one for compound words
Helmut> as distinct from separate words. I do not know why
Helmut> hyphens are discouraged in the standard spelling of many
Helmut> languages, compared to separate words or real compounds.
Hyphen is sometimes inserted in German to make the root-word boundary
in the compounds clearer and in some cases, to disambiguate. However,
it is usually not done. In electronic communications, you sometimes
see people use upperCase letters instead of hyphens for that purpose.
noesy_parker
1717AA.121...@news.supernews.com:
> How are new words handled? For example, consider English. Suppose
> you
> visited some new (to you) city in England, and found there was a
> regional food, called blerkbo, which you had never before heard of.
> You are taught to speak the word, but no one tells you how it is
> spelled.
>
Write it phonetically (Coca Cola - ke3 kou3 ke3 le4), or more likely,
describe it (e.g. pork meat balls if that is what blerkbo is). Or a
mixture of the two. Or literal translation (e.g. hot dog - re4 gou3)
Robert Tichacek
noesy_parker <noesy_...@clara.co.uk> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
> news:1162505416.3...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>
> > No, you said that the "word" 'male' is (field+labor), which obviously
> > it isn't.
>
> Some people obviously think it is to say it is so on Wiki. Now you may
> have a low opiniion of Wiki, but would I trust what you say on this rather
> than someone else who might know better than you?
That's the etymology of the *character*, not the word. nan2 is
obviously not a compound of tian2 and li4, just as hao3 is not a
compound of nu3 and zi3.
rlt
--
Remove "chop" from email to, well, email me
António Marques
>>>>>> "Jamshid" == Jamshid Ibrahim <Jdib...@cashette.com> writes:
>
> Jamshid> The problem with the present day German is not the length
> Jamshid> of words but making compounds of at least three words:
> Jamshid> Unahängigkeitserklarung.
>
> I don't have any problems with this word, even though you misspelt it.
> (There is a "b" between "a" and "h".)
>
> And I had no problems the first time I heard Bundesverfassungsgericht.
> I could even extend it to Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgebäude or
> Bundesverfassungsgerichtsverurteilung.
>
>
> Jamshid> I agree this is indeed not human nature particularly
> Jamshid> when you want to start a new line.
>
> I found it completely natural.
But are you human?
> Jamshid> In Addition, Germans spend a lot of time and energy
> Jamshid> speculating about whether to write a certain word as a
> Jamshid> long compound or separae words.
>
> Do they? Learning German as L2, I don't have such a problem.
>
>
> Jamshid> In order to save the energy (energy is expensive
> Jamshid> nowadays) I suggest avoiding long compound words and
> Jamshid> making German more human or go back to the roots.
>
> As I said before, Chinese make much longer compounds (in terms of the
> root-word count). No Chinese seem to have any problem with it.
I usually find it neater when there are spaces between words. But if the
word is a compound of three or four others, then let it be. Above that
I'm convinced that reading slows down. Which has nothing to do with the
spoken language, of course.
--
am
laurus : rhodophyta : brezhoneg : smalltalk : stargate
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Dik T. Winter
> In article <1162441102.0...@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "Richard Fangnail" <richard...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it just human nature
> > to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
>
> Not for Germans nor people fluent in the language.
Neither for Dutch or for people fluent in that language. The difference
is that in Dutch and German the constituents are just glued together while
in English they are separated by a space. On occasion you also see such
spurious spaces in Dutch texts; that is called "the English disease".
The longest word that can be found in the standard (1954) wordlist (and
that is indeed commonly used) is "levensverzekeringsmaatschappijen" ("life
insurance companies"). Of course, much longer valid words can (and have
been) created, but they are not commonly used (just like the Finnish
example, I presume).
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924131
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/
Dik T. Winter
...
> Really? Then give me the reason why it is not "Baumwollskleidung",
> "Baumwollenkleidung", "Baumwollekleidung", "Baumswollenkleiendung"?
Wouldn't the last three mean an adjective is used? It is "Baumwollkleidung"
because that is the conjunction of two substantives. In Dutch:
"katoenkleding" (two substantives)
vs.
"katoenen kleding" (an adjective and a substantive).
With "kleidung"/"kleding" there is indeed an alternative possibility (and
I think that also in German a space will separate an adjective and a
substantive).
Think however about "Baumwollplantage". Dutch "katoenplantage", English
"cotton plantation".
Capitalisation of substantives has not much to do with it. In Dutch such
capitalisation has been abandoned already centuries ago, but the formation
rules are still very similar to those in German.
Dik T. Winter
> cotton-clothing means clothing for cotton and cotton clothing means
> clothing of cotton?
I think it is the distinction between two substantives or an adjective
plus a substantive. Cotton can be both.
Tak To
>
> léntokonesùihkuturbiinimòottoriàpumekaanikkoàliupseerioppilas
>
> lento = flight
> kone = machine -> lentokone aeroplane, "flight-machine"
> suihku = jet
> turbiini = turbine -> suihkuturbiini, "jet turbine"
> moottori = motor, engine -> suihkuturbiinimoottori "jet propulsion
> engine"
> apu = assistance
> mekaanikko = mechanic, engineer -> apumekaanikko "assistant mechanic"
> ali = sub-, under
> upseeri = officer -> aliupseeri "non-commissioned officer"
> oppilas = student, pupil, cadet, trainee
> from oppi "learning", oppia "to learn".
Ah, so it is 飛機用噴射式渦輪引擎助理工程師士官學員.
<fei1ji1yong4 pen4she4shi4 wo1lun2 yin3qing2 zhu4li3 gong1cheng2shi1
shi4guan1 xue2yuan2>
Tak
--
----------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Tak To ta...@alum.mit.eduxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------^^
[taode takto ~{LU5B~}] NB: trim the xx to get my real email addr
Mike Wright
It may be that that's another of the legitimate semantic compounds. The
only mention Qiu Xigui makes of it is to point out that the "strength"
element was written in a variety of locations relative to the "field"
element.
>>> A more complicated example - "learn"
>>>(Xue2) is made up a a child sitting under a roof, two hands holding
>>>something (an ear of rice grains? I can't remember).
>>
>>An abacus, I believe.
>>
>>>It suggests a
>>>child learning an act (thrashing grains?).
>>
>>The earliest form of this character has two x-shapes, one above the
>>other, over a roof. (See Boltz, page 8.) Sort of like this:
>>
>> x
>> x
>> ^
>>/ \
>>
>>There is no child there at all--nor any hands. Although Boltz doesn't
>>deal with <xue2>,
>
> If I'm wrong, I'll blame my teacher who used this to illustrate how
> characters are constructed.
Depending on when you took Mandarin, your teacher might not have been in
a position to know all the Oracle Bone forms.
>>it looks to me as though the "childbirth" reading of
>>子 works well as a phonetic there, too.
>
> How so?
Boltz gives the "childbirth" morpheme (now written 育 and 毓) an Old
Chinese reading of */grj@kw/ and Li Fang-kuei gives 學 as */gr@kw/.
That's quite close enough for a phonetic element.
>>If anyone doubts Boltz's conclusions, I suggest reading the book and
>>seeing what you think after that, rather than relying on my summary of
>>his detailed discussions.
>
> Interesting post. Thanks very much. I'll get Boltz's book and have a look
> when I have the time.
It's not too long--205 pages including indexes, bibliograhpy, and
glossary--and it's a very interesting read.
Peter T. Daniels
noesy_parker wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
> news:1162505416.3...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>
> > No, you said that the "word" 'male' is (field+labor), which obviously
> > it isn't.
>
> Some people obviously think it is to say it is so on Wiki. Now you may
> have a low opiniion of Wiki, but would I trust what you say on this rather
> than someone else who might know better than you?
If you are of the opinion that the morpheme nan2 'male' is in fact not
monomorphemic but a compound of two morphemes, one meaning 'field' and
one meaning 'labor', then it is incumbent upon you to reveal what those
component morphemes are, and to show the historical-phonological
processes by which they eroded to the shape nan2.
That, however, is obviously not what you are claiming; you are making
the tired old assertion that the _character_ that represents nan2
'male' is compounded of two components, one of which represents 'field'
and one of which represents 'labor'. In the limited stock of Chinese
reference books I have on hand, I find enough information to suggest
that the "field" part is the phonetic and the 'labor' part is the
radical.
> > The vast majority of characters that are supposedly semantic-semantic
> > compounds are in fact not;
>
> Some estimates put it at 13%, not a low number.
DeFrancis 1984: 84 puts it at 3% for all the non--phonetic+semantic
categories together.
> In any case, are you saying that "woman" cease to have any association with
> "woman" when it is used as a radical? Why is it used as a radical then
> rather then say "grass" or "worm"?
Of course not. "Radical" means it's used for some vague semantic
property, such as 'female'. The _other_ component of a character
containing 'woman' is a more or less close match of the sound of the
morpheme represented by the character.
Mike Wright
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
> news:1162505416.3...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>
>>No, you said that the "word" 'male' is (field+labor), which obviously
>>it isn't.
>
> Some people obviously think it is to say it is so on Wiki. Now you may
> have a low opiniion of Wiki, but would I trust what you say on this rather
> than someone else who might know better than you?
>
>>The vast majority of characters that are supposedly semantic-semantic
>>compounds are in fact not;
>
> Some estimates put it at 13%, not a low number.
DeFrancis, whose opinion I have no reason to mistrust, puts the total
for other than semantic-phonetic in Kangxi at 3%. This includes
pictographic (1.3%, e.g., <ma3> "horse"), simple indicative (0.4%, e.g.,
<shang4> "top, upper"), and compound indicative (0.13%--possibly your
example of <nan2> "male").
Interestingly, in _The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy_, DeFrancis
gives <ming2> "bright" 明 as an example of a compound indicative (sun +
moon = bright), but Boltz (page 66) explains that before the appearance
of the 明 form, the graph 月 (now <yue4> "moon") was used alone to write
<ming2> "bright", making 明 yet another case of an element having had a
phonetic value that it no longer has (due to replacement by what turns
out to be yet another semantic-phonetic compound).
This is the kind of information that may not even have been available
back in the 1980s when _TCL:F&F_ was published. If even DeFrancis could
be wrong in identifying a character as compound indicative
(semantic-semantic), I plan to be very wary in my vast inexpertise.
> In any case, are you saying that "woman" cease to have any association with
> "woman" when it is used as a radical? Why is it used as a radical then
> rather then say "grass" or "worm"?
>
>>they are phonetic-semantic like almost all
>>Chinese characters. Three trees (I don't know about three women)
>>obviously is one of the few true semantic-semantic compounds; but it's
>>very likely that if you consult the history of the language, you'll
>>find that 'learn' is not what you said, but a radical+phonetic.
--
Mike Wright
http://www.raccoonbend.com
Joachim Pense
> In article <1r61t0coy6dd4$.1w2e9fzv4dfgd$.d...@40tude.net> Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
> ...
> > Really? Then give me the reason why it is not "Baumwollskleidung",
> > "Baumwollenkleidung", "Baumwollekleidung", "Baumswollenkleiendung"?
>
> Wouldn't the last three mean an adjective is used? It is "Baumwollkleidung"
> because that is the conjunction of two substantives.
Certainly not. Composition of nouns is pretty anarchic in German -
that is, it is very difficult to find the rules that govern our
sprachgefühl when producing composed words.
Schwein + Fleisch = Schwein_e_fleisch
Huhn + Feder = Hühn_er_feder (with Umlaut)
Wolle + Kleidung = Woll_kleidung (final e deleted)
Halle + Bad = Halle_n_bad
Schaf + Wolle = Schaf_s_wolle
and so on
> In Dutch:
> "katoenkleding" (two substantives)
> vs.
> "katoenen kleding" (an adjective and a substantive).
Sure, we could also say "baumwollene Kleidung" (although the suffix
-ne meaning "made of" is almost not productive anymore)
Joachim
Joachim Pense
Hm - what would be the content of this tradition?
Would it be a rule like:
If A and B are composed, and A denotes a material, than the
composition A B without hyphen always means: an instance of B made of
the material A, while every other meaning requires the hyphen?
So it should be "paper-clip", because a "paper clip" would be a clip
made from paper?
Joachim
Joachim Pense
> In article <dvattd7e8fgf.x...@40tude.net> Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
> ...
> > But how does Peter's example work? Is there a syntactic reason that
> > cotton-clothing means clothing for cotton and cotton clothing means
> > clothing of cotton?
>
> I think it is the distinction between two substantives or an adjective
> plus a substantive. Cotton can be both.
What makes "cotton" an adjective? Can you say "my shirt is cotton"
like you say "my shirt is red?"
Joachim
Joachim Pense
> Helmut Richter wrote:
>> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>> A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
>>> not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
>>>
>>> Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
>>
>> So "cotton" is an adjective here? I understood it as a part of a compound
>> noun, probably because "cotton clothing" (i.e. clothing made of cotton) is
>> a compound ("Baumwollkleidung") in my language.
>
> One way you can tell it's not a compound is that it has equal stress --
> cf. "black bird" and "blackbird."
>
> As to whether it "is" an adjective, that rather depends on your theory
> of grammar. It can't take -er -est or more/most, so it's not
> morphologically an adjective,
So "red" or "dead" wouldn't be adjectives either?
Can I say "my shirt is more red than yours" or "my shirt is redder
than yours", but not "my shirt is more cotton than yours"?
Joachim
Mike Wright
> noesy_parker wrote:
>
>>"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote in
>>news:1162505416.3...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>>
>>>No, you said that the "word" 'male' is (field+labor), which obviously
>>>it isn't.
>>
>>Some people obviously think it is to say it is so on Wiki. Now you may
>>have a low opiniion of Wiki, but would I trust what you say on this rather
>>than someone else who might know better than you?
>
> If you are of the opinion that the morpheme nan2 'male' is in fact not
> monomorphemic but a compound of two morphemes, one meaning 'field' and
> one meaning 'labor', then it is incumbent upon you to reveal what those
> component morphemes are, and to show the historical-phonological
> processes by which they eroded to the shape nan2.
>
> That, however, is obviously not what you are claiming; you are making
> the tired old assertion that the _character_ that represents nan2
> 'male' is compounded of two components, one of which represents 'field'
> and one of which represents 'labor'. In the limited stock of Chinese
> reference books I have on hand, I find enough information to suggest
> that the "field" part is the phonetic and the 'labor' part is the
> radical.
You must have some that I don't have. Something vaguely like OC /*n@m/
for "male" vs. */din/ (or even */d'ien/) for "field" seems like a bit of
a stretch. Perhaps Dylan or someone else can tell us about the rime
categories, or whatever else is relevant.
Of course, that doesn't mean that one or the other element did not have
multiple readings, as in the cases of woman/kneeling,
moon/evening/bright, child/childbirth, eye/look/see, and so on. (Boltz
calls this "polyphony", which, being somewhat musically oriented, I find
distracting.)
Pending concrete information to the contrary, I expect "male" to turn
out to be one of those rare compound indicative characters.
>>>The vast majority of characters that are supposedly semantic-semantic
>>>compounds are in fact not;
>>
>>Some estimates put it at 13%, not a low number.
>
> DeFrancis 1984: 84 puts it at 3% for all the non--phonetic+semantic
> categories together.
>
>>In any case, are you saying that "woman" cease to have any association with
>>"woman" when it is used as a radical? Why is it used as a radical then
>>rather then say "grass" or "worm"?
>
> Of course not. "Radical" means it's used for some vague semantic
> property, such as 'female'. The _other_ component of a character
> containing 'woman' is a more or less close match of the sound of the
> morpheme represented by the character.
>
>>>they are phonetic-semantic like almost all
>>>Chinese characters. Three trees (I don't know about three women)
>>>obviously is one of the few true semantic-semantic compounds; but it's
>>>very likely that if you consult the history of the language, you'll
>>>find that 'learn' is not what you said, but a radical+phonetic.
The term "radical", as applied to the semantic elements of characters,
seems to be out of favor these days. DeFrancis (1984, page 80), says
that the term "unfortunately, is the most common but also the most
misleading, since the semantic element is not the basic root but a later
accretion to the really basic phonetic."
wugi
> Certainly not. Composition of nouns is pretty anarchic in German -
> that is, it is very difficult to find the rules that govern our
> sprachgefühl when producing composed words.
>
> Schwein + Fleisch = Schwein_e_fleisch
> Huhn + Feder = Hühn_er_feder (with Umlaut)
> Wolle + Kleidung = Woll_kleidung (final e deleted)
> Halle + Bad = Halle_n_bad
> Schaf + Wolle = Schaf_s_wolle
> and so on
Same anarchy in Dutch. And meseems I saw similar things in Scandinavian.
In the latest of our all too frequent spelling reforms some loonies decided
to change a rather simple and semantic rule about the (in)famous "tussen-n"
(intermediate -n-).
Previously you would decide to use it or not according to whether a plural
was involved or not:
katte/kwaad (cat's evil = mischief)
katten/ziekte (cats' desease).
Now we're supposed to check (thus know) if the plural of the first term
exists only with -(e)n (then use tussen-n), or if it also exists with -s
(then don't):
groente - groenten and groentes, so: groente/soep (previously
groenten/soep), vegetable(s) soup;
rug - ruggen (only), so: ruggen/graat (prev. rugge/graat), backbone (me
still reading it as backs bone)
When three terms meet, there used to be a hyphen rule (amongst others):
tweede-klasse/rijtuig, second class coach.
Don't ask me how it's now:-/
guido
http://home.scarlet.be/~pin12499/
Helmut Richter
> Jamshid> In Addition, Germans spend a lot of time and energy
> Jamshid> speculating about whether to write a certain word as a
> Jamshid> long compound or separae words.
>
> Do they? Learning German as L2, I don't have such a problem.
The German rule is quite simple: always write it as one word.
The *English* rule - or lack thereof - is the one which consumes "a lot of
time and energy speculating about whether to write a certain word as a
long compound or separae words": why "lifeboat", "life jacket", and
"life-size"?
--
Helmut Richter
Ron Hardin
being the minimal keystroke path.
More recently educated programmers than me like to use the shift key, which
slows typing down a great deal, or insert a _, an additional character
also involving a shift key.
When I inherit such a program, I edit these both out, if it doesn't
result in conflicting names.
Perhaps German will take the ``_''+Caps path one day, and read like a C++
program.
--
Ron Hardin
rhha...@mindspring.com
On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
LEE Sau Dan
Joachim> I think it is a deficiency of the German orthography not
Joachim> to mark the boundary of compounds - particular in view of
Joachim> the fact that we capitalize our nouns to increase
Joachim> readability. Some centuries ago, it was more common to
Joachim> use hyphens (typically double=hyphens), and even
Joachim> InnerWordInitials. The latter is slowly coming back,
Joachim> maybe through the influence of programming
Joachim> languages. Advertising is also fond of it.
Another thing that would help is to indicate the glottal stop. That
would make "Verb`endung" and "Verbendung" unambiguous.
Joachim> BTW, the two shapes of the lower case s in German (a
Joachim> "long" one resembling an f, and the usual form) also
Joachim> served as an aid to separate compunds visually, because
Joachim> the short form was reserved for the end of the word (and
Joachim> the compound), including a connecting s.
Why not extend this to all letters? Why is "s" so special?
LEE Sau Dan
Mike> Interestingly, in _The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy_,
Mike> DeFrancis gives <ming2> "bright" 明 as an example of a
Mike> compound indicative (sun + moon = bright), but Boltz (page
Mike> 66) explains that before the appearance of the 明 form, the
Mike> graph 月 (now <yue4> "moon") was used alone to write <ming2>
Mike> "bright",
Well? Using the character for "moon" to write the word for "bright"?
Perhapse, Boltz has to give a reason why the ancient Chinese didn't
use the character for "sun" to write the word for "bright", given that
the sun is so much brigher than the moon.
Mike> making 明 yet another case of an element having
Mike> had a phonetic value that it no longer has (due to
Mike> replacement by what turns out to be yet another
Mike> semantic-phonetic compound).
You mean <ming2> was once pronounced like <yue4>? I see nothing
common phonologically in these 2 words. None of the initials, finals
and tones coincide.
LEE Sau Dan
>> And I had no problems the first time I heard
>> Bundesverfassungsgericht. I could even extend it to
>> Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgebäude or
>> Bundesverfassungsgerichtsverurteilung.
>>
>>
Jamshid> I agree this is indeed not human nature particularly when
Jamshid> you want to start a new line.
>> I found it completely natural.
António> But are you human?
Are you suggesting that I'm supernatural?
>> As I said before, Chinese make much longer compounds (in terms
>> of the root-word count). No Chinese seem to have any problem
>> with it.
António> I usually find it neater when there are spaces between
António> words. But if the word is a compound of three or four
António> others, then let it be.
You COULD write with parenthesis. But it seems that nobody bothers to
do so. There are ambiguities with not using parenthesis to indicate
the structure of multi-level compounds. And we sometimes make jokes
with them. Just like a "little girl school" can mean either "(little
girl) school" or "little (girl school)". People just don't like
writing the parenthesis, and they just tolerate the ambiguity.
António> Above that I'm convinced that reading slows down. Which
António> has nothing to do with the spoken language, of course.
It's just an excuse, IMO. Slow readers read slowly, no matter what
writing convention is used. Faster reader read fast, even with poorly
designed writing conventions.
LEE Sau Dan
Helmut> On Fri, 3 Nov 2006, LEE Sau Dan wrote:
Jamshid> In Addition, Germans spend a lot of time and energy
Jamshid> speculating about whether to write a certain word as a
Jamshid> long compound or separae words.
>> Do they? Learning German as L2, I don't have such a problem.
Helmut> The German rule is quite simple: always write it as one
Helmut> word.
Genau! Deshalb habe ich kein Problem damit.
Only those who think its complicated find it complicated.
Helmut> The *English* rule - or lack thereof - is the one which
Helmut> consumes "a lot of time and energy speculating about
Helmut> whether to write a certain word as a long compound or
Helmut> separae words": why "lifeboat", "life jacket", and
Helmut> "life-size"?
I can't agree more!
And the standard convention isn't consistent in itself, either, when
you want to change the expression. E.g. "That boy is _3 years old_"
vs. "That is a _3-year-old_ boy". Let's not talk about why there is
no "s" after "year" in the latter expression. But why should
"3-year-old" now be hyphenated together, while "3 years old" is
separated by spaces between the constituents?
António Marques
>>>>>> "António" == António Marques <m....@sapo.pt> writes:
>
> >> And I had no problems the first time I heard
> >> Bundesverfassungsgericht. I could even extend it to
> >> Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgebäude or
> >> Bundesverfassungsgerichtsverurteilung.
> >>
> >>
> Jamshid> I agree this is indeed not human nature particularly when
> Jamshid> you want to start a new line.
> >> I found it completely natural.
>
> António> But are you human?
>
> Are you suggesting that I'm supernatural?
Who knows. Not I. Remember, I'm still being nice for you on behalf of
some witty remark you made a couple of months ago.
> >> As I said before, Chinese make much longer compounds (in terms
> >> of the root-word count). No Chinese seem to have any problem
> >> with it.
>
> António> I usually find it neater when there are spaces between
> António> words. But if the word is a compound of three or four
> António> others, then let it be.
>
> You COULD write with parenthesis. But it seems that nobody bothers to
> do so. There are ambiguities with not using parenthesis to indicate
> the structure of multi-level compounds. And we sometimes make jokes
> with them. Just like a "little girl school" can mean either "(little
> girl) school" or "little (girl school)". People just don't like
> writing the parenthesis, and they just tolerate the ambiguity.
Which makes me think there must be some value in it.
> António> Above that I'm convinced that reading slows down. Which
> António> has nothing to do with the spoken language, of course.
>
> It's just an excuse, IMO. Slow readers read slowly, no matter what
> writing convention is used. Faster reader read fast, even with poorly
> designed writing conventions.
Well, that's like saying a faster car moves faster even if the road is
bumpy. The fact remains that is is bumpy, and what is being discussed is
precisely its bumpiness.
LEE Sau Dan
phoglund> LEE Sau Dan kirjoitti:
>> >>>>> "Richard" == Richard Fangnail
>> <richard...@excite.com> writes:
>>
Richard> You know what I mean, esp. technical words. Isn't it
Richard> just human nature to want a space between the parts, so
Richard> it's easier to read?
>> No. I don't think it's human nature.
>>
>> Chinese has lots of compound words much longer than German.
phoglund> Now THAT is interesting. Would you be bothered to tell
phoglund> more about compounding in Chinese?
It works just like German. You string together a set of words to form
a longer word, whose meaning is derived from the component words. Of
course, you may say compounding in Chinese is slightly simpler than
German, as Chinese has no plurals nor grammatical gender. Chinese
words don't have inflections at all -- one fewer thing to worry about.
The following examples show some resemblance of the compounding
between German and Chinese:
German Chinese English
Zahnarzt 牙醫 dentist
Zahn 牙 tooth
Arzt 醫 (medical) doctor
Yes, I know that the English root word "dent-" (from Latin) refers to
"tooth". But "dent-" and "tooth" comes from different sources, and as
an English learner, I have to learn to morphemes: "tooth" and "dent-".
Even knowing the root "dent-" doesn't let me know immediate what a
"dentist" is. Just a person related to teeth. But what is that? The
German and Chinese words for "dentist" is much clearer, and
_structurally_ identical! (Another similar example: Tierarzt vs. 獸醫
vs. veterinary)
German Chinese English
Schreibtisch 書桌 desk
schreib 書 writing
Tisch 桌 table
phoglund> Being shamefully ignorant of Chinese, I'd like to shed
phoglund> some of my ignorance.
Here is an example:
中華人民共和國香港特別行政區財政司司長官邸
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U
That's just one word, with 21 characters (i.e. 21 root morphemes).
I've labelled the characters with Roman letters. The compound can be
dissected as follows.
ABCDEFG ==> The People's Republic of China
HIJKLMN ==> Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
OPQRS ==> Chief Financial Secretary
TU ==> Residence
It should be obvious what the compound means.
But... each of these 4 parts are themselves compounds:
ABCDEFG:
AB ==> Chinese
CD ==> people (in the sense with plural form being peoples in English)
EFG ==> republic
HIJKLMN:
HI ==> Hong Kong
JK ==> special
LM ==> administration
N ==> region
OPQRS:
OPQ ==> financial office/department
RS ==> residence for a government official
We don't have to stop there. Each of these smaller words (AB, CD,
EFG, HI, JK, LM, N, OPQ, RS) are themselves analyzable as compounds,
with each character conveying a part of the meaning. e.g.
EFG:
E ==> together
F ==> concord
G ==> country
And this compound EFG has been coined to translate "republic".
Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim
LEE Sau Dan schrieb:
> >>>>> "Jamshid" == Jamshid Ibrahim <Jdib...@cashette.com> writes:
>
> Jamshid> The problem with the present day German is not the length
> Jamshid> of words but making compounds of at least three words:
> Jamshid> Unahängigkeitserklarung.
>
> I don't have any problems with this word, even though you misspelt it.
> (There is a "b" between "a" and "h".)
>
> And I had no problems the first time I heard Bundesverfassungsgericht.
> I could even extend it to Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgebäude or
> Bundesverfassungsgerichtsverurteilung.
Mark Twain once wrote these compounds are not words but carnival
processions. There is a street in my city called: Ostertorsteinweg (a
compound of four words). I believe we need a limit set by
Bundesverfassungsschutz not go beyond two word-compounds without using
a hyphen otherwise you have to pay some fine to Finanzamt.
Nigel Greenwood
Dik T. Winter wrote:
> On occasion you also see such
> spurious spaces in Dutch texts; that is called "the English disease".
> The longest word that can be found in the standard (1954) wordlist (and
> that is indeed commonly used) is "levensverzekeringsmaatschappijen" ("life
> insurance companies").
Funnily enough, in my Fischer edition of Kafka's Diaries, the
publisher's blurb says that he started work in 1908 at the "Prager
'Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt' (workers' accident insurance
institute). I think this was the official spelling, but it's not clear
to me why they split the word up in this rather English fashion.
Nigel
--
ScriptMaster language resources (Chinese/Modern & Classical
Greek/IPA/Persian/Russian/Turkish):
http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk
Nigel Greenwood
LEE Sau Dan wrote:
> You COULD write with parenthesis. But it seems that nobody bothers to
> do so. There are ambiguities with not using parenthesis to indicate
> the structure of multi-level compounds. And we sometimes make jokes
> with them. Just like a "little girl school" can mean either "(little
> girl) school" or "little (girl school)". People just don't like
> writing the parenthesis, and they just tolerate the ambiguity.
It's worth mentioning the ingenious orthographic trick used in Finnish.
To say "in [the newspaper] Helsingin Sanomat", they write "Helsingin
Sanomat -lehdessä" (with a space before the hyphen; lehdessä="in the
newspaper"). This is equivalent to putting parentheses round the
preceding name: in the same way you could write "The Sunday Times
-lehdessä".
Without the hyphen ("Helsingin Sanomat lehdessä") the phrase might be
taken to mean "in Helsinki's Sanomat newspaper".
Peter T. Daniels
It's not a semantic rule, it relates to stress. And hyphenation
practice is quite fluid -- American editors are more likely to write
compounds solid, British ones with hyphen.
Peter T. Daniels
You can, but "my shirt is made of cotton" or "I have a cotton shirt" is
more likely.
But see my earlier posting on how freely to throw around the word
"adjective."
Peter T. Daniels
Joachim Pense wrote:
> Am 2 Nov 2006 10:36:06 -0800 schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>
> > Helmut Richter wrote:
> >> On Thu, 2 Nov 2006, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>
> >>> A compound *cotton-clothing would have a different meaning; it would
> >>> not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
> >>>
> >>> Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
> >>
> >> So "cotton" is an adjective here? I understood it as a part of a compound
> >> noun, probably because "cotton clothing" (i.e. clothing made of cotton) is
> >> a compound ("Baumwollkleidung") in my language.
> >
> > One way you can tell it's not a compound is that it has equal stress --
> > cf. "black bird" and "blackbird."
> >
> > As to whether it "is" an adjective, that rather depends on your theory
> > of grammar. It can't take -er -est or more/most, so it's not
> > morphologically an adjective,
>
> So "red" or "dead" wouldn't be adjectives either?
? Do you have a problem with redder/reddest??
"Marley was deader than a doornail." Why not?
> Can I say "my shirt is more red than yours" or "my shirt is redder
> than yours", but not "my shirt is more cotton than yours"?
The latter would be unusual, but the other day I looked at shirts that
were 35% cotton 65% polyester; shirts that were 65% cotton 35%
polyester; and shirts that were 100% cotton. You could perhaps (but
probably not) say that the latter were more cotton than the former.
Peter T. Daniels
All I have is Karlgren's Analytic Dictionary (Dove repr.); I don't know
how to find something in Wilder & Ingram, Analysis of Chinese
Characters (let alone Karlgren's Grammata Serica Recensa!). All the
more recent such publications are far too expensive and peripheral to
my concerns to have acquired! If it were important to me, I'd simply
email David Prager Branner (a leading apostle of the no sem-sem
compounds approach).
I guess I'm too old to worry ... only 40 years younger than DeF ...
Peter T. Daniels
LEE Sau Dan wrote:
> >>>>> "Mike" == Mike Wright <ne...@raccoonbend.com> writes:
>
> Mike> Interestingly, in _The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy_,
> Mike> DeFrancis gives <ming2> "bright" 明 as an example of a
> Mike> compound indicative (sun + moon = bright), but Boltz (page
> Mike> 66) explains that before the appearance of the 明 form, the
> Mike> graph 月 (now <yue4> "moon") was used alone to write <ming2>
> Mike> "bright",
>
> Well? Using the character for "moon" to write the word for "bright"?
No, using a character whose morpheme sounded like the morpheme 'bright'
to also write the morpheme 'bright'. Just like in Sumerian. The meaning
was irrelevant, but in this case by coincidence happened to seem
relevant.
> Perhapse, Boltz has to give a reason why the ancient Chinese didn't
> use the character for "sun" to write the word for "bright", given that
> the sun is so much brigher than the moon.
Because the word 'sun' didn't sound anything like the word 'bright'.
> Mike> making 明 yet another case of an element having
> Mike> had a phonetic value that it no longer has (due to
> Mike> replacement by what turns out to be yet another
> Mike> semantic-phonetic compound).
>
> You mean <ming2> was once pronounced like <yue4>? I see nothing
> common phonologically in these 2 words. None of the initials, finals
> and tones coincide.
Then perhaps those aren't the phonetic values he's referring to.
This is one of Prager Branner's favorite examples, since it's so
ingrained in the folklore that "bright" = "sun + moon" -- but it isn't.
It's the sound of "moon" with a meaning vaguely relating to 'sun'.
Peter T. Daniels
LEE Sau Dan wrote:
But why do you call the 21-character string a "word"? What do you mean
by "word" now? (You used to use "word" to translate the morpheme that
refers to the unit designated by one character, and you heatedly
objected to my suggestion that the two-character lemmata in most modern
Chinese-English dictionaries are the "words" of Chinese.)
António Marques
I should clarify that when I wrote 'that is semantics, not syntax', I
was just remembering that the only thing possibly wrong with
*cotton-clothing was its semantics.
Peter T. Daniels
All three would normally be single words, in US usage, anyway.
Yet another thing to complain about Brits about!
(To whose defence the Aussies will now doubtless rally yet again ...)
Peter T. Daniels
BECAUSE OF THE STRESS PATTERNS! Sheesh, how many times do I have to say
it?
Peter T. Daniels
Nigel Greenwood wrote:
> Dik T. Winter wrote:
> > On occasion you also see such
> > spurious spaces in Dutch texts; that is called "the English disease".
> > The longest word that can be found in the standard (1954) wordlist (and
> > that is indeed commonly used) is "levensverzekeringsmaatschappijen" ("life
> > insurance companies").
>
> Funnily enough, in my Fischer edition of Kafka's Diaries, the
> publisher's blurb says that he started work in 1908 at the "Prager
> 'Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt' (workers' accident insurance
> institute). I think this was the official spelling, but it's not clear
> to me why they split the word up in this rather English fashion.
Could Czech-German have deliberately been made more Czech-friendly?
António Marques
> LEE Sau Dan wrote:
>>>>>>> "Mike" == Mike Wright <ne...@raccoonbend.com> writes:
>> Mike> Interestingly, in _The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy_,
>> Mike> DeFrancis gives <ming2> "bright" 明 as an example of a
>> Mike> compound indicative (sun + moon = bright), but Boltz (page
>> Mike> 66) explains that before the appearance of the 明 form, the
>> Mike> graph 月 (now <yue4> "moon") was used alone to write <ming2>
>> Mike> "bright",
>>
>> Well? Using the character for "moon" to write the word for "bright"?
>
> No, using a character whose morpheme sounded like the morpheme 'bright'
> to also write the morpheme 'bright'. Just like in Sumerian. The meaning
> was irrelevant, but in this case by coincidence happened to seem
> relevant.
>
>> Perhapse, Boltz has to give a reason why the ancient Chinese didn't
>> use the character for "sun" to write the word for "bright", given that
>> the sun is so much brigher than the moon.
>
> Because the word 'sun' didn't sound anything like the word 'bright'.
It's because of stuff like this that I think that the recurrent argument
with LSD about the nature of chinese characters isn't hair-splitting at all.
Peter T. Daniels
Ron Hardin wrote:
> More recently educated programmers than me like to use the shift key, which
> slows typing down a great deal, or insert a _, an additional character
> also involving a shift key.
> On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
Lookit that, perpetual carper Ron Hardin commits a garden-path sentence!
erilar
Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> Am Fri, 3 Nov 2006 02:33:30 GMT schrieb Dik T. Winter:
>
> > In article <dvattd7e8fgf.x...@40tude.net> Joachim Pense
> > <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
> > ...
> > > But how does Peter's example work? Is there a syntactic reason that
> > > cotton-clothing means clothing for cotton and cotton clothing means
> > > clothing of cotton?
> >
> > I think it is the distinction between two substantives or an adjective
> > plus a substantive. Cotton can be both.
>
> What makes "cotton" an adjective? Can you say "my shirt is cotton"
> like you say "my shirt is red?"
In those examples it's a predicate adjective. In front of a noun it's an
attributive adjective. In German the former needs no ending, but in the
latter case it does.
--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar),
philologist, biblioholic medievalist
http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman
>to want a space between the parts, so it's easier to read?
You are asking two questions, one about language, one about
orthography (spelling/writing).
Almost all (all?) languages have compounds, including English. E.g.,
the process to certify teachers in public schools could be the public
school teacher certification process.
Regarding orthography, some languages put in lots of spaces, and some
don't. English varies. ("Snowman" and "database" exist alongside "snow
man" and "data base.) German generally doesn't require a space.
Neither system seems easier or harder to read.
-Joel
Joel M. Hoffman, PhD
http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman
>actually used word (not a facetious proposal), which to me is quite
>easy to read and understand. It means somebody who is studying to be a
>non-commissioned officer with mechanic skills, specializing in the
>repairs and maintenance of aircraft jet propulsion turbines.
That's the word I use every time I talk about people studying to be
non-commissioned officers who will repair my aircraft jet propulsion
turbines....
-Joel
erilar
Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> Really? Then give me the reason why it is not "Baumwollskleidung",
That would, if anything, be the cotton's clothing
> "Baumwollenkleidung", "Baumwollekleidung",
There are rules for creating compound rules. If you don't know whether
or not something other than the naked words is needed to combine them,
most Germans will understand you if you just slap them together. Quite
often the latter suggestion IS correct.
"Baumswollenkleiendung"?
If this were a word, it wouldn't even involve cotton.
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman
>> not be clothing made of cotton, but something that clothes cotton.
>>
>> Adj N (i.e. clothing made of cotton) isn't a compound, it's a NP.
>
>So "cotton" is an adjective here? I understood it as a part of a compound
>noun, probably because "cotton clothing" (i.e. clothing made of cotton) is
>a compound ("Baumwollkleidung") in my language.
No. "Cotton" is a noun here, just like "gold ring," i.e., a ring made
of gold.
One way of determining that the first word is a noun and not an
adjective is that the word can't be modified in the ways that
adjectives can: "*very cotton clothing" (cf "very blue clothing").
Alec Marantz did a lot of work of this type of thing in the 1980's. I
think some of his results are published in his _On the nature of
Grammatical Relations_ (1984).
Brian M. Scott
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote in sci.lang:
> Helmut Richter wrote:
[...]
>> The *English* rule - or lack thereof - is the one which consumes "a lot of
>> time and energy speculating about whether to write a certain word as a
>> long compound or separae words": why "lifeboat", "life jacket", and
>> "life-size"?
> All three would normally be single words, in US usage, anyway.
> Yet another thing to complain about Brits about!
> (To whose defence the Aussies will now doubtless rally yet again ...)
I prefer 'life-sized', myself.
Brian
Christian Weisgerber
> > I think it is the distinction between two substantives or an adjective
> > plus a substantive. Cotton can be both.
>
> What makes "cotton" an adjective? Can you say "my shirt is cotton"
> like you say "my shirt is red?"
Yes.
But "das Hemd ist Baumwolle" is fine for me at least in colloquial
German, too.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Paul D
> phog...@abo.fi wrote:
>>
>> léntokonesùihkuturbiinimòottoriàpumekaanikkoàliupseerioppilas
>>
>> lento = flight
>> kone = machine -> lentokone aeroplane, "flight-machine"
>> suihku = jet
>> turbiini = turbine -> suihkuturbiini, "jet turbine"
>> moottori = motor, engine -> suihkuturbiinimoottori "jet propulsion
>> engine"
>> apu = assistance
>> mekaanikko = mechanic, engineer -> apumekaanikko "assistant mechanic"
>> ali = sub-, under
>> upseeri = officer -> aliupseeri "non-commissioned officer"
>> oppilas = student, pupil, cadet, trainee
>> from oppi "learning", oppia "to learn".
>
> Ah, so it is 飛機用噴射式渦輪引擎助理工程師士官學員.
>
> <fei1ji1yong4 pen4she4shi4 wo1lun2 yin3qing2 zhu4li3 gong1cheng2shi1
> shi4guan1 xue2yuan2>
>
> Tak
The Japanese will do something similar, but then eliminate every second
kanji and repeat the process until there are 2-4 left.
Paul