German hyphenation

October 27, 2016 4:29 PM

If I needed to hyphenate the term Bundespräsidentenwiederholungswahlverschiebung across the end of a line, where would be the acceptable places to do so?

In English, for instance, hyphenation is not done in the middle of a syllable. The acceptable hyphenation points for "Watergate" are "Wa-ter-gate" or possibly "Wat-er-gate", but not anywhere else in the word: "Wate-rga-te" would be right out. Can you similarly indicate the places where a hyphen would be acceptable in the case of this particular long neologism?

posted by Shmuel510 to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

I am not getting the premise but I'd say you could throw a hyphen in anywhere that the remaining pieces would still be pronounceable (or I guess between syllables is the easy way of saying that), which appears to be the rule you've gone by with Watergate.
posted by masquesoporfavor at 4:39 PM on October 27, 2016

Best answer: Let's break the word down a bit. The main words are: bundespräsidenten wiederholungswahl verschiebung

So bund-es-pras-i-dent-en wie-der-hol-ungs-wahl ver-schie-bung is the syllabic breakdown, but if you break it up into the main words instead, I don't believe you need a hyphen between "bundespräsidenten" and "wiederholungswahl", for example. A German grammar expert may have a different opinion, but that's how I understand written German deals with compound words of this nature.
posted by ananci at 4:42 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'm not a native speaker. I'm sort of assuming you don't read German, but here is the Duden's answer. Basically:
First preference is to break between components (with the hyphen, contrary to ananci's answer): Bundespräsidenten, wiederholungswahl, verschiebung
If that doesn't work, apply the same rule again, to the pieces: bundes-präsidenten, wiederholungs-wahl, ver-schiebung.
And again, resorting to syllables when we don't have a constituent word or prefix: bund-es-prä-si-dent-en, (wieder-holungs)-wahl, ver-schie-bung
posted by hoyland at 5:03 PM on October 27, 2016

Best answer: Not a native speaker, but I would keep "Bundespräsidenten""wiederholungswahl" and "verschiebung" intact if possible. However, those are also compound words, and can be broken down further if necessary: Bundes-präsidenten-wiederholungs-wahl-verschiebung.
posted by kjs4 at 5:03 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Alas, I do not read German! But this makes sense, and seems to be a rough consensus. If I can get confirmation from somebody who is a native speaker, that'd be much appreciated, but otherwise, this seems good enough. Thank you!
posted by Shmuel510 at 5:52 PM on October 27, 2016

Best answer: Native speaker here:

Component words:
Bundes-präsidenten-wiederholungs-wahl-verschiebung

Syllables:
Bun-des-prä-si-den-ten-wie-der-ho-lungs-wahl-ver-schie-bung
posted by Hairy Lobster at 6:25 PM on October 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

Agreeing with the suggestions to hyphenate by component words. I wouldn't think to hyphenate watergate in any other way than water-gate (which oddly enough, was not one of your suggestions).
posted by cnanderson at 6:58 PM on October 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Another native speaker here, popping in to explain why Hairy Lobster's (correct) version differs from the others above at the syllable level: in German the hyphen needs to be followed by a consonant, not a vowel unless it is a separate word. To put it differently, words are broken down into syllables such that they start with consonants. Hence Bun-des and not Bund-es.
posted by meijusa at 9:41 PM on October 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

I always thought acceptable hyphenation points should give you a good clue how the first part was pronounced, also in compound words split between parts. For me, the only aesthetically acceptable place for your example is water-gate.
posted by epo at 7:07 AM on October 28, 2016