Recent Trends
Although there is no universally agreed-upon guideline regarding the use of compound words in the English language, in recent decades written English has displayed a noticeable trend towards increased use of compounds. Recently, many words have been made by taking syllables of words and compounding them, such as pixel (picture element) and bit (binary digit). This is called a syllabic abbreviation.
There is a trend in Dutch and the Scandinavian languages towards splitting compound words, known in Norwegian as "særskrivingsfeil" (separate writing error) and in Dutch as "Engelse ziekte" (English disease). Because the Norwegian language relies heavily on the distinction between the compound word and the sequence of the separate words it consists of, this has dangerous implications. For example "røykfritt" (smokefree, meaning no smoking) has been seen confused with "røyk fritt" (smoke freely). In Dutch, compounds written with spaces may be confused as they are in Norwegian, but can also be interpreted as a sequence of a noun and a genitive (which is unmarked in Dutch) in formal abbreviated writing. This may lead to, for example, commissie vergadering "commission meeting" being read as "commission of the meeting" rather than "meeting of the commission" (normally spelled commissievergadering).
The German spelling reform of 1996 introduced the option of hyphenating compound nouns when it enhances comprehensibility and readability. This is done mostly with very long compound words by separating them into two or more smaller compounds, like Eisenbahn-Unterführung (railway underpass) or Kraftfahrzeugs-Betriebsanleitung (car manual). Such practice is also permitted in Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk), and encouraged between parts of the word that have very different pronunciation, such as when one part is a loan word or an acronym.
Read more about this topic: Compound (linguistics)
Famous quotes containing the word trends:
“Power-worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Thanks to recent trends in the theory of knowledge, history is now better aware of its own worth and unassailability than it formerly was. It is precisely in its inexact character, in the fact that it can never be normative and does not have to be, that its security lies.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)