Recent comments in /f/Showerthoughts

antiquemule t1_je6pez5 wrote

In France we used to have a yearly dictation competition on prime time television - “the golden dictionaries”. You could tag along at home to see how you compared with the best.

Afterwards, Members of the very serious French academy would explain the obscure grammar rules that had to be followed to get the right answer.

Almost nobody got 100%. Riveting stuff!

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spolite t1_je6m5i5 wrote

Yeah, I don't even know what gender spelling is...

But isn't that a German compound word (since noun clusters aren't a thing in German)?

Like, even if a native German speaker had never heard that compound word, they'd still understand it because it's just a combination of other words?

And also, aren't they made up a lot of the time and thus won't necessarily be found in the dictionary?

I mean... can German compound words be misinterpreted or "put together" incorrectly? And does it happen very often? Almost like... it's expected?

English isn't a phonetic language, it's just all over the place... A grown ass native speaker of English will screw up spelling stuff all the time and it's kinda just normal... normal to keep effing up our own language.

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