Re: Help with German
| From: | Raik Lorenz <raik.lorenz@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 27, 2006, 12:27 |
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-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 20:41:21 -0000
Von: caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>
An: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Betreff: Help with German
> In working with Pokorny's "Indogermanisches Wörterbuch" I have come
> across some German words the meanings of which I don't know. I can't
> find them in my German dictionary. I can break them into parts, but
> the compounds don't make any sense to me. Would any of our German
> members tell me what these words mean currently?
>
I'll take a try.
> Leuchtpflanze
Never heard of it. This item is neither in my active nor in my passive vocabulary -
before your mail reached me.
I dare imagine, that it signiefies a plant the emits light under certain
conditions (cf. bioluminescence).
Currently i daresay either it means nothing or it is an item of specialist jargon. But I
can't tell for sure.
> Fruchertrag [maybe it's <Fruchtertrag>?]
That (assuming that you omitted <t>) seems to be an old-fashioned word for harvest,
i.e. the sum of crops of one incidence of harvest in a certain area, that you
can actually harvest. Today, it's probably sufficient to say "Ertrag", if the
context is understood. And this one should be found in a current dictionary.
> Wassersiedler
The only thing I can imagine a "Wassersiedler" to be is someone, who settles /
lives near a body of water (lake, river, sea, etc.). One further possibility
is, that it is a proper noun denoting a sort of animal or plant - German is
full of weird exocentric compounds that work this way.
> Eiröden
Sorry, I can't help you with this one - not the faintest glimpse od a shimmer of an
idea, what that might be.
Hopefully, this still was helpful in some way,
regards,
Raik Lorenz
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