| | |  | This is the Conversation Forum for The Longest Word
<< Your 55 letters short!
That's all well and good... >> | |
| | | Subject: You call that long?
Posted Jul 4, 2006 by zigurdu
| | Posting
1
| | So, you English use chemical formulas as an excuse for making long words? In languages of Northern Europe, we can make words infinitely long. Lets use Norwegian as an example, even though German is better at this.
Ok. You have a machine that makes machines. Those newly made machines does exactly the same thing as the original machines, and so on. The first machine is therefore a "machine making machine making machine making ... machine". That makes a good buch of words after a while.
In Norwegian, these words are maskin = machine and lage = make. The difference is, as in German influenced languages, we dont split our words. One term has a meaning as just one word, not several words, reducing many possible misunderstandings. In other words, we can make a "maskinlagemaskinlagemaskinlage...maskin"
This is a very boring word, of course, but one can be more creative, and make long words built with all kinds of words. It's not that they get accepted for any official dictionary, but they are still perfectly legal and useable words. I'm not looking down on the English language, but I think you all should give Germans and others some credits for this ability. ;D
|
|  |
|
|
   
Conversation list
Most of the content on h2g2 is created by h2g2's Researchers, who are members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced. In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please click on the relevant button to alert our Moderation Team. |
Home
