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Re: Help with German

From:Raik Lorenz <raik.lorenz@...>
Date:Sunday, August 27, 2006, 12:27
-------- 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.
> > Thanks. > > Charlie > http://wiki.frath.net/senjecas
Hopefully, this still was helpful in some way, regards, Raik Lorenz -- Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal für Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer