Comment on What are some things that deserve their own word?

• litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Is this really a problem though? Compound words in English can be spaced, hyphenated, and sometimes even parenthesized. German has the word “doppelkupplungsgetriebe” which means “dual clutch gearbox” but whether the first pair is hyphenated or not, these three words in English together refer to a single object, a type of automobile transmission.

  Separating the word into its parts is no different than splitting “hypoglycemia” (hypo meaning low, glyco meaning sugar, and -emia meaning presence in blood) into its parts: useful for understanding, but cannot substitute for the original compound word.

  Meanwhile, English has a genuine lack of a word for joy from the misfortune of others, that we borrow the word verbatim from English. The vacuum of a word meant we looked farther afield. And while that word was imported, I imagine there’s a similar challenge finding an English word for “the warm feeling of sand between ones toes at the beach”. The need for words is solved by usage, not by prescribing rules that prohibit importation.

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  • dsilverz@catodon.rocks ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    The need for words is solved by usage, not by prescribing rules that prohibit importation.

    Yes, I definitely agree. My earlier "the only problem is, it's two words" was my strict attempt to stick to the OP's definition "its own word" (with "word" as singular) while also being biased towards closed compound words instead of open or hyphenated compound words. I'm aware a morpheme isn't the same thing as a word, and a word can contain multiple morphemes, it's just that... well, at least to my eyes and ears, as someone who quite enjoys stitching words together, a closed compound word describing something feels better than having an open or hyphenated compound word. I'm quite fond of neologisms, especially when they're a single, running sequence of letters (as pneumoultramicroscopicosilicovulcaniconiosis is a single sequence, albeit gigantic and breakable).
    
    Therefore, by "problem" I didn't mean "grammatically problematic". Grammatically, it's okay and, in fact, expected. I guess the word "problem" was way too much for what I actually meant.

    Compound words in English can be spaced, hyphenated, and sometimes even parenthesized.

    Yes, similar thing happens in Portuguese (my native language as a Brazilian): some examples include "quarta-feira" (Wednesday) and "trem de pouso" (landing gear).

    German has the word “doppelkupplungsgetriebe” which means “dual clutch gearbox” but whether the first pair is hyphenated or not, these three words in English together refer to a single object, a type of automobile transmission.

    The first part of the word instantly reminded me of the word "doppelganger" and, AFAIA, it has no hyphen.

    Meanwhile, English has a genuine lack of a word for joy from the misfortune of others

    While I was reading this part of your reply, the word "sadism" immediately popped up in my head as the closest English word to describe schadenfreude, except, in practice, yeah, both words are very different in meaning. (Also, sadism is literally coined after a proper name, Sade's name)
    
    "Saudade" (Portuguese for that feeling of missing someone, as in the feeling from "she misses her deceased grandma") is also a word "missing" (pun intended) an English equivalent.

    emia meaning presence in blood

    Not sure if this was intentional but I loved the reference (the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell). Lol

    importation.

    Trivia: if we get deeper into etymology and history of evolution of human languages, we could argue modern languages are almost entirely comprised of imported words. The word "importation", itself, is a meta example:
    
    in (Latin for “in, at, on; into”) + portō (Latin for “to carry, bear; convey”) + ātiō (from -tiō, Latin suffix added to verbs to form action nouns denoting a process, action, or result of an action)
    
    !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

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    • litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I wish to be abundantly clear that I wasn’t attacking your position, but that folks on the fence about “what makes a proper English word” should have some examples where English does the thing that makes the language fairly incomprehensible unique.

      Not sure if this was intentional

      I absolutely intended that and I’m glad you noticed! The doppelkupplungsgetriebe example is also a reference to an episode of Top Gear (UK). I meant to hyperlink both to their respective YouTube videos but entirely forgot.

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  • wasabi_noir@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    That’s not infuriatingly pedantic enough for some idiots.

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