Life und Style
Casting from pods!
Miss V is mobile! That’s right. If you so desire, you can watch me and my antics on the train, eating lunch or going for your morning run (warning: this may be a health hazard).
I finally got my 19th-Century brain around podcasting, so if you click here you can access Miss V in the iTunes store, or this will subscribe you to the podcasts directly. (Note to the dedicated followers: I’m starting from the Schwarzfahrer video.)
While I struggle to get my head around the technology, the word ‘podcast’ itself I find interesting. The ever-reliable friend Wiki tells us that the word is a portmanteau of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’ – which is obvious enough given that iPods were the first portable entertainment device to receive these little transmissions.
This got me thinking about portmanteaux in general – where two words are mashed together to make a new word (neologism!). English is full of them – whether it be reading an ‘advertorial’ (an advertising editorial feature), looking at a ‘pixel’ (PICture-ELement), or catching up on celebrity gossip and the lives of Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, of course!)
While I could go on listing them in English, I have no idea about German portmanteaux. So German-speakers: Are there any? What are they? Top marks for funny/cool entries!
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5 comments for “Casting from pods!”
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Hier lernt man ja richtig was…
The first German portmanteaux that came to my mind was “Informatik” (yeah, well, no idea why…). Our friend Wiki agreed with me that thos indeed is one and knew even more.
The official translation for portmanteaux is “Kofferwort” – suitcase-word. LOL
Never heard of that one in more than 40 years of first hand expertise with the German language.
Don’t you ever mention this to someone from Austria where Koffer or Vollkoffer has a somewhat special additional meaning
More portmanteux examples on http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofferwort
ok, miss v, you are living in germany, right? you’re paying German bills and you shop in German supermarkets. People keep talking about the Teuro (teuer as in expensive, Euro as in the European Union currency union).
I think right after Podcast there goes Teuro or smog (smoke + fog – but that’s english, so doesn’t really count, right?)…
Ha, think about what you’re asking!
You have realized yourself that Germany is the country where native speakers pack together multiple full nouns to create a new word – instead of blending them together. We’d rather use acronyms than “Kofferworte”.
What you’re looking for can at best be found in inofficial, colloquial language. German Wikipedia offers “Kurlaub” for “Kurzurlaub”, but I have never encountered that term.
What actually IS real is “Jein”, a mix of “Ja” and “Nein”, which is used when you have (or want) to consider pros and cons in giving an answer.
Still, it’s not an official word, like “modem” and such – that’s an English language feature.
@ Dr. Huch – I like ‘Kofferwort’, it sounds much more fun than portmanteaux.
@ phillipp – I’ve not heard ‘Teuro’ before, but I remember coming to Germany with the DM (which was roughly equal to an NZ $), and then coming back when the Euro was in place. I’m now so poor!
@ 42317 – Yeah, I think Germany is way more about modulation than portmanteaux. But ‘Jein’ is cool. In NZ we say “YeahNaaaaah…” a lot. Which means kind of the same thing.
“Mechatroniker” is the name of a job which combines abilities of a “Mechaniker” and an “Elektroniker”. These guys are requested especially in the “Kfz-Branche”, because they can fix the mechanics of your engine and the cable-stuff as well.
ABIer – this refers to the numerous different styles of celebration of the “ABI”, which means “Abitur”. This is the highest level of education you can achieve in a regular school allowing you to become a student at a university.
So in some areas the local brewery makes a special beer for the parties celebrating the end of school life. So it’s an “ABi-Bier” or short “ABIer”. Unfortunately this beer usually has a poor quality.