4 Quick Tips for German Compound Nouns

One of the reasons I decided to learn the German language was because of its compound nouns.

They’re incredibly charming, but they can also be a bit tough to deal with for beginner learners.

Here’s a guide on the basics of German compound nouns.

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Contents

• What Are German Compound Nouns?
• Challenges of German Compound Nouns
• • They can get very long
  • They’re not always found in the dictionary
• 4 Quick Tips on German Compound Nouns
• • 1. Pretend it’s a word search
  • 2. Add dashes between individual words
  • 3. Look for the die Fuge-  connector.
  • 4. Think practically and visualize
• And One More Thing...

What Are German Compound Nouns?

Compound nouns are made up of 2 or more smaller words stuck together to make a brand new one.

It keeps things quite simple; where in English you’d use 2 or 3 separate words, the Germans compress everything together.

For example: Waiting Room in English is 2 words, but in German they would call it a Wartebereich or Wartezimmer.

Challenges of German Compound Nouns

They seem straightforward, but German compound nouns come with a few unique complications.

They can get very long

While the compressing rule sounds reasonable enough, it can also lead to some hilariously long German compound nouns. And they’re not going to be your friends when it comes to pronouncing or spelling them.

My favorite example of how long and complicated German compound nouns can get is Rhabarberbarbara, or Rhubarb-Barbara.

“Rhubarb cake” in English is Rhubarbkuchen in German.

“Rhubarb-Barbara’s Bar” in English can be merged into Rhabarberbarbarabar in German.

Here’s another mouthful: Schweinefleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.

This 67-letter monster means “legislative law for the monitoring of pork-meat labeling.”

Have a look at the video link . Don’t worry if you don’t understand all of the language if you’re just starting out; try and grasp the concept.

They’re not always found in the dictionary

Germans often make up their own compound nouns by sticking two words together to form a new one, kind of the same way in which we would do with colloquial English.

We might call something a thingy, or call a remote control a “zapper” or a “clicker”. An equally silly example in German is ein Unterwegsbier. This is the name of a beer that you might take with you on the way to a bar or a night-club as a “beer on the go” or “walking beer.”

So this means that, for many German compound nouns, you may have to end up dissecting them yourself to figure out what they mean.

To learn more German compound nouns that are used colloquially, one handy resource would be FluentU.

4 Quick Tips on German Compound Nouns

It’s hard to imagine ever learning every word in the dictionary, let alone all those used colloquially which don’t even appear in it, so don’t worry if you don’t get all of them. This is basically just to help you identify, understand and pick apart the complexities to make it more understandable!

It’s difficult to know where to start, but once you do, you’re rolling. Here are our top tips for de-tangling long, complicated-looking German words:

1. Pretend it’s a word search

I know it feels like more work than your casual word search game, but it gets the job done.

Scan the word and search for any term you know. If you can find just one smaller word inside the big long word that you recognize, you’re a step closer to identifying the meaning.

Let’s take the word Rhabarberbarbarabar

Let’s say you already knew that Rhabarber is the German word for rhubarb. You’d already be well on your way to understanding the entire word.

2. Add dashes between individual words

This trick has helped me break down plenty of German compound nouns. Every time you note a “word piece” within the compound noun, put a (mental or physical) dash right after it.

Like so:

Rhabarber|barbarabar

That little dash will save you so much brainpower when you’re trying to de-clutter the entire word. It’s that much easier to break down the successive words:

Rhabarber|barbara|bar

3. Look for the die Fuge-  connector.

This is something common to all languages, you just may not have realized it was there before. They help sentences flow better by acting as a barrier between sounds which are difficult to merge together.

Try saying “an apple” versus “a apple.” “An apple” is way easier, right?

For the same reason, Germans put letters in between sounds that are too hard to put together. The only noteworthy difference in German is that the connector sound becomes part of the same word. Here are some examples of where a connector is used:

e:

n or en:

ens:

er:

s or es:

No Füge:

It is also important to mention here that the gender of the word which comes last (der, die, das) will be the gender of the new compound word, as shown above.  

You might already know that a year in German is das Jahr – a neuter noun. But season/time of year takes feminine- die Jahreszeit because the stem of the word is Zeit and that is a feminine noun.

4. Think practically and visualize

This is yet another aspect of German compound nouns I adore—you just need a pinch of imagination (and decent sense) to realize their meaning.

When you’re struggling to figure out what a German compound noun means, my advice is to visualize the words involved. Don’t just take them at face value.

All you need to figure out what the compound noun means is already there for you, in the words themselves. You just have to practice a bit of that trademark German practicality.

Let’s take the word Handschuhe as an example.

Hand|schuhe = “hand shoes” = gloves

You can’t get more literal than that. Here’s another one that requires a bit of fun thinking: Warteschlange.

Warte|schlange = “waiting snake” = queue

Good luck and happy word searching!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)