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Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

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Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#271

Post by 9rx »

ragall wrote: post #237

It appears to me that the author is trying too hard to make a point: "merry-go-round" is a single compound word that several dictionaries contain; "canned goods" is not commonly used[1] (more of a bureaucratic jargon), and people would just say "cans"(US) or "preserves" (UK); "household chores" is simply "chores", as the word is no longer commonly used outside the house context; "coffee break ritual" is not a concept…

I didn't take that the author was trying to make a point, rather pondering about when a word becomes worthy of inclusion in the dictionary. "Boiling water" is a word that hasn't (yet) been deemed worthy. On the other hand, "hot water" is a word that is included in the dictionary, just as "still water", "warm water", etc. are. Somewhere between those included and "boiling water" is line where a word becomes worthy of inclusion. But where, exactly, is that line?

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#272

Post by NoPicklez »

I'm not a linguist, but I don't know why you would need a dictionary that includes words with spaces.

It's pretty obvious "boiling water" shouldn't be in the dictionary to be begin with but "boiling" and "water" should be.

Unless I'm just not understanding it

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#273

Post by boxed »

eszed wrote: post #262
boxed wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word splitting in English is an accident of history, not a linguistic reality though. This is hilariously obvious to Swedish speakers :P

Well, it's a linguistic reality - all of which are accidents of history - which absolutely isn't to say it reflects anything definitive about reality reality. My point is that English has a straightforward way of dealing with this (admittedly arbitrary) case, which OP either ignores or doesn't understand, and instead adds unnecessary categorical complication.

It's not a linguistic reality in spoken English is what I meant. We Swedish speakers can hear it when English speakers pronounce the space and when they don't, because we're super sensitive to that difference because our language cares. We can easily flip from one state to the other and repeat the word/words back and English speakers will instantly hear that it sounds weird and wrong but often they don't understand why.

English spelling does NOT line up with pronounced English when it comes to what we in Swedish calls "särskrivning" which is a word that roughly means "separateness writing".

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#274

Post by adamauckland »

voidUpdate wrote: post #103

> “Boiling water” isn’t “water that happens to be boiling.” It’s a hazard, a cooking stage, a state of matter I guess we'll have to disagree then, because "boiling water" is "water that's boiling" to me. It's not a different state of matter to "water", that would be "steam". It being a hazard doesn't mean it's a singular concept, same as "wet floor"

The kettle was boiling water.

The chef was out the back, boiling water.

The chef was out the back. Boiling water had spilled everywhere.

The seas had turned to boiling water.

I dunno, could be down to interpretation.

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#275

Post by Skeime »

OoooooooO wrote: post #249
Skeime wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: I looked this up in the online version of the Duden (the predominant German dictionary). It does have an entry "Black Hole" (so the English term!) but not for "schwarzes Loch", which is the normal German term for it. (In the printed versions, you might need to go to the Universalwörterbuch or so to find the English entry, it might not be in the normal "Die deutsche Rechtschreibung"; I have not checked.)

The Duden is not official since 1996. Since 2004 the official guidelines for the german speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Swiss, Belgium, South Tirol, Liechtenstein, Romania, Hungary - see this founding document with the list: https://www.rechtschreibrat.com/DOX/wiener_erklaerung.pdf ) are covered by the Rechtschreibrat ( https://www.rechtschreibrat.com/ ). The official german dictionary is here: https://grammis.…

I wrote "predominant", not "official". And I think that is still true.

Also, from what I can tell using the site, it does not serve as a full dictionary. Rather, it lists the general rules of German orthography (as decided by the Rechtschreibrat) and has some limited tables of special words.

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#277

Post by netsharc »

ben_w wrote: post #134
account42 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we don't expect dictionaries to contain every compound word you could come up with in German either.

Not the ones that someone could come up with, just the ones people do use.

Your examples are ridiculous though.. The meaning of "[G]esundheitszeugnis" can be derived if you understand the 2 words.

Meanwhile, a Bahnhof would be a "Yard/square of lanes" if one didn't get taught that it's "train station". Although I suppose anyone learning German will quickly learn that "Bahn" is something to do with trains. Unless it's Autobahn. Or Schwimmbahn.

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#278

Post by RGamma »

Beijinger wrote: post #208
kdheiwns wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if "boiling water" is one word, what about boiling sugar? Boiling milk? Boiling volcano? Boiling soup? Adding two words together creates a new and different concept. The permutations necessary to represent every concept ever formed by combining two or more different words would be endless. Some of them on the list, like black hole, do make sense. That's a very distinct thing. It's not a hole in the conventional…

Boiling water is not a word. The phrase contains two words. While German has no word for "boiling water", it uses two words too, an adjective and a noun, the German language has the principle of composite words. As a consequence, there is an infinite amount of German words. "Hackernewsleser" would be a word I just made up but every German can understand. A reader of Hackernews. Obviously this makes a dictionary trick…

Kochendwasser exists but is rarely used (and wouldn't need to occur in a dictionary because its meaning is obvious from its parts).

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#279

Post by hbs18 »

jakub_g wrote: post #33
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #9

There are nearly half a million compound phrases that aren’t in any dictionary—simply because they contain spaces. “Boiling water.” “Saturday night.” “Help me.” I would hope that none of those examples were taking up space in a dictionary.

It's quite interesting that "boiling water" in many Slavic languages is actually a separate word (and not derived from "water", but from "boiling"; similar how the author mentions "ice" being used instead of "frozen water").

Which slavic languages have that? In mine I can't think of a single word for that other than kipuća voda which literally means boiling water.

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#280

Post by ben_w »

netsharc wrote: post #277
ben_w wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the ones that someone could come up with, just the ones people do use.

Your examples are ridiculous though.. The meaning of "[G]esundheitszeugnis" can be derived if you understand the 2 words. Meanwhile, a Bahnhof would be a "Yard/square of lanes" if one didn't get taught that it's "train station". Although I suppose anyone learning German will quickly learn that "Bahn" is something to do with trains. Unless it's Autobahn. Or Schwimmbahn.

Why are they ridiculous? Words that get used, get used, the etymology is a curiosity to most. In English, we use "computer" even though it used to be a job title. Native English speakers freely use "rucksack" even though it was stolen from German and even though "backpack" is also available, without the space, as a compound English word for a pack worn on the back. English/German has "briefcase"/"Briefkasten" to describe a box that letters go in, it's just that the former is for transporting letters and the latter is for receiving them.
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