Re: Hyphenation and compound words

On April 16, Christoph Hintermüller wrote:

> Dampfschiff ->steam engine boat
>   Dampf -> steam
>   Schiff -> ship
>
> Both words Dampf and Schiff are regular and valid german words. A speciallity
> for german is that new compund Nouns and other words may be created (
> invented if not allready existing ) by simply combining two other words.

There are many word forms in German, e.g. Schiffe (ships) and Dampfes
(steam's).  I believe that some word forms (e.g. genitive) are not
legal compound prefixes (e.g. Dampfesschiff).  So how should your
spell checker react if you write Dampfesschiff, should it complain or
not?  These cases are more common in Swedish, and my opinion is that
the spell checker ought to complain.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson ([email protected])
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/