Re: CHAT: German help

Hello!

On 6/30/06, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> The Germans seem to have developed the best on-line dictionaries for foreign
> use
... ooh, I'm feeling a little bit of _Nationalstolz_ now... <waves a
small black-red-gold flag> ;-)

> and I go to two sources: LEO's Deutsch-Englisch site:
> http://dict.leo.org/ which gives you the definition and
> declension/conjugation of nouns and verbs, and the excellent site at TU
> Chemnitz: http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/ that gives you a kind of concordance,
> where you see the word in many different contexts.  Together, these beat
> leafing through the huge Langenscheidt and straining your hands and eyes.
They certainly do. I use LEO's dictionary a lot; I've even used it as
a sort of thesaurus (enter a word that's almost but not quite the one
you want, and keep clicking on its translations, and their
translations, and so on, until you find something you like)!

> But they aren't perfect.  In neither one could I find "Gebrauchsspurig," for
> neither of them break the word down into parts for you.  You have to do that
> yourself, and I was going to suggest something having to do with "used" as
> well, "on the outside."  But Spur evaded me, with all its meanings. :(  Good
> to know about GERTWOL.
I only know about that tool because I used to work for the company
that developed it; and for most of my time there, I was on the GERTWOL
team. But I wouldn't want to live without the various TWOLs! (Online
versions of TWOLs and other tools for various languages are listed on
http://www.lingsoft.fi/?lang=en&doc_id=107.) I find myself using
FINTWOL (mainly for checking my spelling and inflection) and SWETWOL
(mainly for irregular verbs ;) a lot... TWOLs do have their quirks,
but most of the time, they are oh-so-useful... :-D

> Interesting about the -ig ending, which I took to be adjectival.  I wonder
> if it is archaic?
Yes, it is an adjective ending; it just attaches to (mainly) noun
stems to form (mainly) adjectives meaning "having <whatever>".

I'm not sure if I'd call it "archaic"... It's definitely not
productive anymore -- for example, _<something>-motorig_ "having <some
sort of> motor(s)" exists already, so I can call a plane _zweimotorig_
("two-motor-y") or _viermotorig_ ("four-motor-y") or maybe even
_mehrmotorig_ ("several-motor-y") or even, though it sounds a little
strange, _blaumotorig_ ("blue-motor-y", if I want to stress the fact
that the motors are blue but maybe the rest of the plane isn't). But
AFAIK a similar derivation from _Propeller_ doesn't exist, and
therefore I can't make up words like _*zweipropellerig_
("two-propeller-y") etc. for planes with two, four, several, or blue
propellers; and I can't call a plane that has propellers (instead of
jets or whatever) _*propellerig_ either.

But the existing adjectives in -ig are still very much in use. The
meanings of some of them aren't quite literal anymore, though... For
example, _vollmundig_ (< _voll_ "full" and _Mund_ "mouth") means
"full-bodied" (as in "a full-bodied wine" or "full-bodied writing")
and thus doesn't refer to someone who literally has their mouth filled
with something. ;-)

Regards,
			Julia 8-)

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)