German: Rules for Compounding Words?

Language Corner
1
I had to smile at a lovely example of a compound word that showed up in my inbox today: Notlangnasenseelenhunde - homeless collies.

But it got me wondering: Are there rules to what can or cannot be compounded - or can one string pretty much any set of words together? Is there an order preference?

I tend to err on the side of leaving words single... but any guidance to help me sound less stilted, less English-translated-into-German ( ) would be appreciated.

2
Speak fast and mumble the der/die/das bits. Then its hard to know if you compounded (or not) and to pick out the wrong der/die/das

3
I think the rule of thumb is, as long as it works in google trenslate:

Notlangnasenseelenhunde = Not long nose soul dogs

...... but the 'Not' had to be separated, for it to make sense.

4
Something like this?

Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswe rkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/21/germans-word-long-language

Donau-dampf-schiffahrts-elektrizitäten-hauptbetriebs-werk-bau-unter-beamten-gesellschaft

5
Ask the Welsh

6
Lebensmittlelvorschusseinstellungskommissionsvorsi tzenderstellvertreter.

Try that after after beers

7
Technically, it has to be genitive or adverbial attribute.

The order is dictated by the meaning you want.

8
Long-nosed soul dogs (i.e., collies, to the cognoscenti ) in need. (The 'of a new home' bit is implied).

So because the most important thing is that the collie needs a new home, the Not bit goes first?

If I had said, for instance, Langnasigennotseele (or some such), I would be emphasizing that the critter in need is a collie, rather than that a dog is homeless?

9
Meloncollie, I am sorry but I do not understand your message. The order is the reverse order of the english equivalent with prepositional construction:

Tageskarte = a card for a day

Tagesmenü = menue of the day

etc.

You can't have an adjective in the middle of it all. Adjectives have declension and would cut the compound for it. It happens that one needs an adjective in a translation, but in the original huge German word, it's either a noun or a kind of adverb.

The trouble is that there is no difference of nature between adjectives and adverbs in German, the difference is purely syntactic (=how they are used). Hence: Schnellfahrer and Langsamfahrer are both correct, but *Schnellauto and *Langsamauto aren't.

10
The prfix "Not-" actually indicates that the word to which it is attached is designed for the case of an emergency (for example: Notration (emergency ration), Notausgang (emergency exit), etc..).

Notlangnasenseelenhunde doesn't make much sense in my eyes as it would mean something along "emergency long nose soul dog".

11
I personally don't understand what the problem could be with regard to the aforementioned problems of adjectives or adverbs (either those compounds exist in common language or they don't, but this is not dependent on adjectives or adverbs; as long as they keep their original meaning they can be quite understandible but still odd as not in use. Changes of course if the compound changed the original meaning of the compound's parts, e.g. honey moon, luna di miele and Flitterwochen),

what I find difficult for a non-German speaking to construct is the genitive thing and singular or plural.

Besides that Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän (captain of DDSG) did exist and nothing strange at all about that noun,

Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswe rkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft sounds artificial in my ears,

and "Elektrizität en betriebswerk" quite southern. In high German I would prefer "Elektrizität s betrieb s werk".

I know that "Obligationenrecht" (plural of the determinant part of the compound) is grammatically OK, sounds not high German, however (which would be "Obligation s recht" (determinant singular) again.

Not sure about "Schweinsbraten"/"Rindsbraten" on the one hand or "Schweinebraten"/"Rinderbraten" on the other.

Anyway, similar problems exist also in Italian, e.g., and probably also in French. "richiedenti l'asilo" (and not "d'asilo"), "conflit d'intérêts", "rivista per la TV, "sgabello da piano" "tavolo in legno" and many many others.

Even proper nouns reflect that: Mostly it is "Königstein" (i.e. Stein+König), not "König s stein" which would be more modern, however (alongside "König s berg", "Friedrich s hafen" ...).

12
So, in the example above, would Langnasenseelenhunde in Not make more sense?

'Nothund', as in dog in need, is commonly used by my colleagues. But my German is poor - I have no idea if half the things they say are slang or proper German.

I'd probably simply have said heimatlos Collie and left it at that.

13
Ah, now I get the problem:

It must be "Notlangnasen hundeseelen " or "Langnasen hundeseelen in Not".

Their souls are in danger, it's not that they were the only dogs with a soul.

(reminds me of Tante Mechthild's "Schwanzhunde" in one of Loriot's movies)

14
I had to look that reference up...

Excellent!

15
I should think not, all dogs have souls

16

The two rules are fairly simple

A) you can compound everything which is spoken as one word like the Zürichseedampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft

BUT

B) you can divide up such words by hyphens to make it easier to understand thanks to the latest language-refoms ( Rechtschreibereformen)

There is the famous verse about

Der Koburger-Kottbusser-Postkutschen-Kutscher (you can write it without hyphens if you prefer it that way !) putzt den Koburger-Kottbusser-Postkutschen-Kasten.

You of course will still see such things like the

Schützenhausschiessverantstaltungsverordnung

and the

Hausverwaltungswaschmaschinenverordnungen

and quite common are things like the

Zentralverwaltungsgebäudeheizung

All these things are perfectly legal and according to the rule but the latest Dudenrechtschreibereformrichtlinien allow the use of hyphens

and I recently with some surprise saw

unsere Tageshitfavoriten

17
OH has often told me you can string as many nouns as you want, but most people stop or break with an adjective, etc. at some point to make it clearer.

And now I'm going to go take something for the headache I acquired while trying to read some of the compound words in this thread.