• TipRing@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Ok, so without looking (and forgive me my vocabulary is really lousy from disuse)

      My strategy for compound words is usually to try to break up the word, starting at the end, since mostly they are nouns with a bunch of adjectives stuck in front.

      Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän

      So kapitän is easy since it’s a near cognate for captain.

      Gesellschaft looks like a word i used to know, but I can’t remember it.

      Schiffahrt - i don’t know this one, but it looks like schiff (ship) plus fahren (to go) - shipping?

      Ampf - no clue

      Donaud - I feel like this must be modifying ampf, because it doesn’t look like a word on its own, but since I don’t know ampf I am stumped.

      So my guess is someone in charge of something to do with shipping.

        • TipRing@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Ah. That makes sense, I wasn’t thinking about proper names and split the word in the wrong spot. Still i think german compound words aren’t that big of a deal once you get used to parsing them.