A selection of proposed German words
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
As already pointed out these words are constructed from other more basic words. As the German language allows for this, some people like it to juggle around and come up with (more or less) funny words.
I guess the majority of English-speaking natives find this funny.
I find it interesting that it is all one giant image and how the wild number of typographic styles confuses me immensely.
Some of these words make not the slightest sense even to a native speaker.
What really grates me about that list is that they write supposedly german words in broken letters without distinguishing final and terminal "s". It should be Fingernageltafelquietſchen and Tageslichtſpielſchock, not Fingernageltafelquietschen and Tageslichtspielschock. (I remember getting that one after watching all three Back to the Future movies back to back on a sunday morning, it was still like, early afternoon after that... totally confusing.)
Actually none of those are proper German words, it's even the article that tries to propose new terms. And yes, we Germans like to chain together words to make new and longer ones on demand, but obviously some combinations are more likely to be understood than other ones.
The ones that I assume are understood immediately by every German speaker, they use unambigous terms that allow only one interpretation and could also come up in casual conversation without someone raising an eyebrow:
• Eisenbahn·schein·bewegung — railway · virtual · motion
• Fingernagel·tafel·quietschen — fingernail · blackboard · squeal
After introduced by someone, the following could easily become part of the language spoken by maybe a group of friends, say because they just fit very well when gossiping about someone or something after a party, or maybe were a fun way to tell some story:
Easy after thinking briefly about it:
• Schmutz·wort·suche — dirty · word · search
• Plausch·plage — prattle · plague
A little more obscure, more context to explain (see the article), but probably halfway ok:
• Leer·tretung — void · stepping
• Bagger·spion — digger · spyhole
• Mund·phantom — mouth · phantom
• Feten·lauschangriff — party · eavesdropping
• Götzen·geschwätz — false goods·chatter
• Herbstlaub·tritt·vergnügen — autumn foliage · strike · fun
The following one, I'd say no one could use without running into the danger of being called a lunatic. They use a lot of uncommon, antiquated or technical terms and you can basically make up any meaning for those composites, as you'd like. Absolute bollocks.
• Tantalus·qual·erlösung — Tantalus·torment·redeption [tantalusqualen probably most people have to look up to find out that it's a name given to very severe pain]
• Zeigarnik·frustation — Zeigarnik·frustration [Zeigarnik effect seems to be a psychological technical term]
• Fingerspitzen·tanz — fingertips·dance [absolutely ambigous]
• Tageslichtspiel·schock — [tageslicht=daylight, lichtspiel=antiquated word for movie projection, schock=shock]
• Marksismus — "marxism", with "Karl Marx" replaced by the old german currency "Mark" [also completely ambigous]
This one is actually funny, because of the play on words:
• Dorn·höschen·schlaf — thorny · panty · sleep (but also sounding very siminar: Dornröschen — The Sleeping Beauty)
- Plauschplage
- Dornhöschenschlaf
I really might accept "Plauschplage" into my vocabulary.
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