

A selection of proposed German words - Vektorweg
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/10/12/opinion/international/20131011_Schott.html

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mlu
I'm German. What kind of proposal is this?

As already pointed out these words are constructed from other more basic
words. As the German language allows for this, some people like it to juggle
around and come up with (more or less) funny words.

I guess the majority of English-speaking natives find this funny.

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galaktor
agreed. tldr as I read it: "lol look at these long words I found in the German
dictionary"

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aw3c2
This is advertisement for a book that is about made-up words.

I find it interesting that it is all one giant image and how the wild number
of typographic styles confuses me immensely.

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JulienSchmidt
Please note, that most of these words aren't real German words, but are
constructed from other German words.

Some of these words make not the slightest sense even to a native speaker.

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fhars
Most of them are perfectly valid hypothetical neologisms, and I'd say that
Fingernageltafelquietschen is perfectly cromulent.

What really grates me about that list is that they write supposedly german
words in broken letters without distinguishing final and terminal "s". It
should be Fingernageltafelquietſchen and Tageslichtſpielſchock, not
Fingernageltafelquietschen and Tageslichtspielschock. (I remember getting that
one after watching all three Back to the Future movies back to back on a
sunday morning, it was still like, early afternoon after that... totally
confusing.)

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cnvogel
(yes, I'm bored right now, so ... spending a lot of time writing a HN comment
;-) )

Actually none of those are proper German words, it's even the article that
tries to propose _new_ terms. And yes, we Germans like to chain together words
to make new and longer ones on demand, but obviously some combinations are
more likely to be understood than other ones.

The ones that I assume are understood immediately by every German speaker,
they use unambigous terms that allow only one interpretation and could also
come up in casual conversation without someone raising an eyebrow:

• Eisenbahn·schein·bewegung — railway · virtual · motion

• Fingernagel·tafel·quietschen — fingernail · blackboard · squeal

After introduced by someone, the following could easily become part of the
language spoken by maybe a group of friends, say because they just fit very
well when gossiping about someone or something after a party, or maybe were a
fun way to tell some story:

Easy after thinking briefly about it:

• Schmutz·wort·suche — dirty · word · search

• Plausch·plage — prattle · plague

A little more obscure, more context to explain (see the article), but probably
halfway ok:

• Leer·tretung — void · stepping

• Bagger·spion — digger · spyhole

• Mund·phantom — mouth · phantom

• Feten·lauschangriff — party · eavesdropping

• Götzen·geschwätz — false goods·chatter

• Herbstlaub·tritt·vergnügen — autumn foliage · strike · fun

The following one, I'd say no one could use without running into the danger of
being called a lunatic. They use a lot of uncommon, antiquated or technical
terms and you can basically make up any meaning for those composites, as you'd
like. Absolute bollocks.

• Tantalus·qual·erlösung — Tantalus·torment·redeption [tantalusqualen probably
most people have to look up to find out that it's a name given to very severe
pain]

• Zeigarnik·frustation — Zeigarnik·frustration [Zeigarnik effect seems to be a
psychological technical term]

• Fingerspitzen·tanz — fingertips·dance [absolutely ambigous]

• Tageslichtspiel·schock — [tageslicht=daylight, lichtspiel=antiquated word
for movie projection, schock=shock]

• Marksismus — "marxism", with "Karl Marx" replaced by the old german currency
"Mark" [also completely ambigous]

This one is actually funny, because of the play on words:

• Dorn·höschen·schlaf — thorny · panty · sleep (but also sounding very
siminar: Dornröschen — The Sleeping Beauty)

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MrBuddyCasino
None of these proposals are catchy (or funny) enough to establish themselves,
except:

\- Plauschplage

\- Dornhöschenschlaf

I really might accept "Plauschplage" into my vocabulary.

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Aardwolf
The Dutch language can do this too ... For example:

hottentottententententoonstelling

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jprdonnelly
Um...Sniglets?

