Re: Verbing Nouns

Subject: Re: Verbing Nouns
From: "Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:29:23 -0800

At 03:01 PM 2/26/97 GMT, John Kohl wrote:
>
>In the above paragraph, I suppose you could translate "Mondayed" into
>German as "habe...gemontagt". But "coffeed" would have to be something
>like "gekaffeet," which looks very odd and is nearly unpronounceable
>because I believe the "roots" of German past participles always end in
>consonants, not vowels. There -are- prefixes in German that change root
>words from one part of speech to another, but sometimes those prefixes
>also change the meaning of the root word somewhat. (e.g., the prefix
>"ver-")
>
Interesting that German is less "flexible" in some ways than English, even
though English derives from German. German and English do share the ability
to string together words to form a kind of compound noun. In English the
words usually remain separated (for example, "tire tread depth gauge"), but
in German they are usually squashed together (for example,
"arbeitslosefursorge" - not sure of that spelling).

--Wayne Douglass

=========================================================
Verity, Inc. Email: wayned -at- verity -dot- com
894 Ross Drive Telephone: 408-542-2139
Sunnyvale, CA 94089 Facsimile: 408-542-2040
Connecting People with Information: http://www.verity.com
=========================================================

TECHWR-L (Technical Communication) List Information: To send a message
to 2500+ readers, e-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send commands
to LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU (e.g. HELP or SIGNOFF TECHWR-L).
Search the archives at http://www.documentation.com/ or search and
browse the archives at http://listserv.okstate.edu/archives/techwr-l.html


Previous by Author: Re: Typoz in Resumes
Next by Author: Re: Manual design 101
Previous by Thread: Re: Verbing Nouns
Next by Thread: Re: Verbing Nouns


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads