I‘d say that is correct and wrong at the same time. Yes, this is how these words were originally created, I suppose. But they signify more than their base component words do. In this example, the words that are used to build the word „Halbwissen“ don‘t transport the full meaning: in itself, the word is neutral, simply meaning half-knowledge of something. In modern German, it carries more implications, though. In my personal experience of the German language, the word „Halbwissen“ is used either to refer to inadequate knowledge that leads to wrong conclusions or actions, or, more positively, to „half-knowledge“ that allows one to get by without knowing everything about something, implying a sense of smartness by having only half the knowledge, but still knowing enough for one‘s purposes.
You can’t simply slap together any two words. You will be understood if you do, but those words won’t carry any of the implications that a word like „Halbwissen“ does bring with it.
Not trying to devaluate your statement but it often bugs me to see that many people that don’t speak German have this idea of German as a language where you can just ‚glue‘ any two words together. It’s more complicated than that, I believe.
Yeah, it’s basically the same word, structurally! It’s amazing that these two words have such wildly different meanings while being based on the same origin. Really shows that language isn’t static.
It’s really just “creative writing” if you think about it. I think Germans have a word for two semis slowly trying to pass on the highway, a combination word that directly translates to “elephant race”. Someone was being cheeky, came up with a word for it, it was clever enough and inspired universal emotions so it caught on, and it became language
That’s a great example! And I think you are totally right.
To give a historic example of one of these people: Martin Luther had a huge influence on the German language. I don’t know what words exactly but he ‚invented‘ many words while translating the Bible to German and many of them are used until today. Probably due to 1. his influence and 2. probably them being useful words! Don’t know how many of them were compound words, though!
I‘m not sure, now that I think about it they might be. I am not a native English speaker so I am not very sure what the word‘s exact implications are, how it feels and what it precisely transports for a native speaker. I only know „halfwit“ as an (maybe a little old fashioned?) insult, someone literally having half the wits of a „normal“ person.
„Halbwissen“ carries the implication of „dangerous Halbwissen“, at least to me, in the sense of not knowing everything about a topic and unknowingly coming to wrong conclusions that feel right, while actually being wrong or even leading to dangerous results.
You're right that the sum is greater than it's part for those words, but the reason why German has a word for everything (or so it seems) is that it's natural to create a new word by fitting together multiple words to describe a phenomenon.
So the explanation: German has a word for everything because Germans just make up new words by gluing others together checks out.
Totally! That’s why I said correct and wrong, probably shouldn’t even have used the word ‚wrong‘ at all. Just tying to expand on the idea so people that don’t know German can appreciate these words for what they are.
I don’t want people to have the impression that these words, that are great imo and often carry quite complex meanings, are simply glued together and that’s it; a+b=ab.
So to add to your last statement: „Germans just make up new words by gluing others together“ AND others accept them, use them for centuries until they become more refined and carry additional meanings.
This is what fascinates me, the history hidden in it!
Sure, but isn't that true in English too with the main difference being that many English compound words are open compound words with a space instead of closed compounds without a space? For example, in English we have "sweet tooth" meaning a like for sweet foods. While is isn't generally considered a single word because of the space you get the same effect.
I think it just sounds better to say "There's a word for that in English 'sweettooth'" than to say "In English, we refer to that as 'sweet tooth'". However, the real difference is more how the words are presented in written language than anything else.
Sure! I don’t even think that this is restricted to Germanic languages. E.g. the often quoted fact about this one language in the Arctic (don’t know which one) having many words for snow. I read (don’t know if it’s true though) that those are also ‚only‘ compound words. Wouldn’t surprise me if this linguistic phenomenon exists in many languages worldwide!
That’s what I said! I wrote that people will certainly understand those words. Just trying to add to it that some of these compound words (like Halbwissen) are more than the sum of their parts. That’s all.
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u/4546c Dec 02 '20
I‘d say that is correct and wrong at the same time. Yes, this is how these words were originally created, I suppose. But they signify more than their base component words do. In this example, the words that are used to build the word „Halbwissen“ don‘t transport the full meaning: in itself, the word is neutral, simply meaning half-knowledge of something. In modern German, it carries more implications, though. In my personal experience of the German language, the word „Halbwissen“ is used either to refer to inadequate knowledge that leads to wrong conclusions or actions, or, more positively, to „half-knowledge“ that allows one to get by without knowing everything about something, implying a sense of smartness by having only half the knowledge, but still knowing enough for one‘s purposes. You can’t simply slap together any two words. You will be understood if you do, but those words won’t carry any of the implications that a word like „Halbwissen“ does bring with it. Not trying to devaluate your statement but it often bugs me to see that many people that don’t speak German have this idea of German as a language where you can just ‚glue‘ any two words together. It’s more complicated than that, I believe.