语言与文风2016theconversation.com
德语为何有这么多精妙的词汇
Why the German language has so many great words
导读
这篇文章讨论德语为什么拥有大量难以翻译的“妙词”，高赞评论把话题从词例拉回到构词机制：复合词、分词名词化，以及外来词的借用与误用。对写作者的价值在于：一个词之所以动人，往往不是因为它新奇，而是因为它承载了一整套概念和文化语境。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
与其堆形容词，不如找一个能同时交代行为、态度和文化背景的具体名词，例如用 sitzpinkler 这类人物标签。
- 02
引入外来词或自造词之前，先确认母语里是否真的没有对应说法，否则容易显得掉书袋。
- 03
把两个意象拼在一起的复合式表达，意义常大于字面之和，但要给足语境让读者自己拼出含义。
- 04
谈语言或文化现象时，给出可复现的机制（构词法、变格规则），比罗列“某语言有好多有趣的词”更有说服力。
HN 评论精选
德语能把分词直接名词化且保持性别中立，这种语法机制让新概念可以随手造词。
简单说：英语和德语都有复合构词，但德语额外有一套简单规则，可以把分词变成名词并进行变格。例如 werdend 意为“正在成为的”，Werdender 指“某个正在成为的人（男性）”。有趣的是，这类分词名词化的复数一律用中性形式，因此是性别中立的，于是被到处滥用。在官方文件里，德语正在丢掉所有专有名词，一切都由分词拼成。例如 Studenten 是“学生（男）”，Studentinnen 是“学生（女）”，而 Studierende 是“在学习的人”。
allendoerfer查看英文原文
TLDR: English and German both have compounds, but German additionally has simple rules to form and decline nouns from participles. E.g.: werdend = becoming Werdender = someone (male), who is becoming Fun fact: These participles always have a neutral plural, so they are gender neutral and are thus abused all over the place. In official documents the German language is losing all of its proper nouns, until everything is built out of participles. E.g.: Studenten = students (male) Studentinnen = students (female) Studierende = people, who study
借来的词只有在意义上超出字面、填补本族语的空白时才有价值，否则只是炫耀。
从根本上说，英语足够灵活：只要这些概念变得足够常见，它们就会变成普通词汇，多半直接从德语搬过来。这确实发生过，比如 Blitzkrieg（常简作 blitz），现在它不只是“闪电战”的字面意思，而是特指某场战争的某个部分；Zeitgeist 也在英语里使用，但并不只是“时代精神”。这类复合词往往意义大于各部分之和，我猜这也是原文作者想说的，这正是它们对别的语言有吸引力的原因。另一方面，这些构造很少真的描述英语里没有词或短语的东西。我觉得，有趣的不是德语有这种构造，而是作为不同文化，他们用不同的词描述不同的概念。补充：我是英语母语者，也能流利说挪威语；Ohrwurm 和 Wunderkind 在这种情况下是站不住脚的例子——它们只是字面翻译（不过少了个空格，任何斯堪的纳维亚语言都能看懂），几乎是反例。用与英语完全同义的外来词只是装腔作势，根本支撑不了他的核心论点。
jkire查看英文原文
Fundamentally, English is a flexible enough language that if any of these concepts became common enough they would become ordinary words (probably lifted directly from German). This has actually happened, for example Blitzkrieg (commonly the "blitz"); now this does not simply mean "lightning war", it very much references a particular part of a particular war. Also, Zeitgeist is used in English, but doesn't simply translate to "spirit of the time". Often such compound words mean more than the sum of their parts (as I guess the OP kind of meant), which is what makes them interesting to other languages. OTOH, it seems pretty rare these constructs actually describe something that English doesn't have a word/phrase for already. In fact, I would say that its not so much that German has such constructs in their language that makes them interesting, and more that as a different culture they have different words to describe different concepts. Edit: I should probably point out that I am a native English speaker that can speak fluently Norwegian. "Ohrwurm" and "Wunderkind" are such nonsense examples in this case; they are literal translations (just without the space, and are understandable from any Scandinavian language), and they are pretty much anti examples. Using foreign words that mean exactly the same as the English equivalents is nothing but pretentious, and doesn't support his central argument at all.
用另一门语言的机制做类比，能把“某语言特殊”的论点检验得更扎实。
梵语也有类似现象。它有精细的组合规则，叫 Sandhi（连读变音），说明相邻元音、或元音与相邻辅音如何变化合成一个音（aa+e 变成 aie 之类）。这允许造出相当长的词，例如 kimkarthavyathaavimoodatha，意思是“不知道下一步该做什么”。
sn41查看英文原文
Sanskrit is similar. There are elaborate rules for combining, called "Sandhi" [1] [2] which shows how nearby vowels or vowels near consonants change to form a combined sound "aa+e = aie" etc. This allows the formation of fairly long words, for example - "kimkarthavyathaavimoodatha", "not knowing what to do next". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhi [2] https://ubcsanskrit.ca/lesson3/sandhirules.html
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