It certainly isn’t just nouns, you do have classics like “zusammensetzen” (put together) and “verschlimmbessern” (to make something worse, despite attempting to improve it).
But yeah, I’m having a hard time coming up with a particularly long composite verb that still makes sense.
Usually, it’s one word + a normal verb to kind of change the meaning of the verb, like “tanzen” means “to dance”, and “seiltanzen” means “to walk on a tightrope” (literally: “to rope-dance”).
And while you could theoretically extend it, e.g. as “hochseiltanzen” (“Hochseil” is a tightrope that’s high above the ground; literally “high-rope”), we just say “auf dem Hochseil tanzen” instead (“to dance on the high-rope”).
Or I guess, you’d specify that it’s a Hochseil once and then say “seiltanzen” in the following sentences.
Yeah, people would understand it, but would look at you funny.
Partially, because they’re just not used to it. “Hochseil” and “seiltanzen” are composite words, but are also just used commonly, so they have made it into the dictionary as separate entries. Meanwhile, “hochseiltanzen” is merely a neologism at this point.
But it does also just sound like you’re really shoehorning in that you’re specifically walking on a high wire. Like you’re just bragging about it.
What’s also kind of funny, is that we have nominalization in German as well, so where a verb (or other word) is used as a noun, and using “das Hochseiltanzen” as a noun does not sound out of place to me. In fact, when I throw “hochseiltanzen” into a search engine, I get four results, all of which use it as a noun and like it’s a completely normal word that does not need explaining.
It certainly isn’t just nouns, you do have classics like “zusammensetzen” (put together) and “verschlimmbessern” (to make something worse, despite attempting to improve it).
But yeah, I’m having a hard time coming up with a particularly long composite verb that still makes sense.
Usually, it’s one word + a normal verb to kind of change the meaning of the verb, like “tanzen” means “to dance”, and “seiltanzen” means “to walk on a tightrope” (literally: “to rope-dance”).
And while you could theoretically extend it, e.g. as “hochseiltanzen” (“Hochseil” is a tightrope that’s high above the ground; literally “high-rope”), we just say “auf dem Hochseil tanzen” instead (“to dance on the high-rope”).
Or I guess, you’d specify that it’s a Hochseil once and then say “seiltanzen” in the following sentences.
That’s great, I enjoyed this little dive very much. Thank you. What if you were to use hochseiltanzen, would it sound out of place ?
Yeah, people would understand it, but would look at you funny.
Partially, because they’re just not used to it. “Hochseil” and “seiltanzen” are composite words, but are also just used commonly, so they have made it into the dictionary as separate entries. Meanwhile, “hochseiltanzen” is merely a neologism at this point.
But it does also just sound like you’re really shoehorning in that you’re specifically walking on a high wire. Like you’re just bragging about it.
What’s also kind of funny, is that we have nominalization in German as well, so where a verb (or other word) is used as a noun, and using “das Hochseiltanzen” as a noun does not sound out of place to me. In fact, when I throw “hochseiltanzen” into a search engine, I get four results, all of which use it as a noun and like it’s a completely normal word that does not need explaining.