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In these weekly episodes, we are helping

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you to improve your German one coffee

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break at the time. If

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you're listening to the podcast version, make sure

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to subscribe whichever platform you're listening on.

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And if you're watching the video version, make sure

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to subscribe to our channel on YouTube. What

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are we talking about today with two German

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natives sitting here? We're looking

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at German compound nouns, which is

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a very big thing in German. Yes,

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and actually, I think one of my favorite

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German words are made up of multiple words

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and we look into what the rules are

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and how they're formed and how people can

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understand them. Say good. Ding

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me a lot. Yeah. No

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skips. I

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am sure lots of people who are

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learning German came across these words in

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the past where there's one, two, three,

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or a chain of words which is

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sometimes daunting to understand. So today,

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we are looking a little bit how they are made up and

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how to kind of break them down to understand

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them and see if there are any rules we

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need to keep in mind. Say good. And,

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and, yes. So, the first

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thing to keep in mind when you see

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one of these really long German compound nouns

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is not to panic, first of

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all, because there is a way to understand

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what's going on. Exactly.

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I would say one of the main things you need

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to consider and keep in mind is that you always

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look at the very last word first. So

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it's the main word in your chain of

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words. It determines what

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gender the whole word is. It also

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lets you see if it's plural or

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singular. And it's also often a good

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clue what you're actually talking about because

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quite often the words in front of

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it just kind of specify or narrow

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down what we're talking about. Okay. Now,

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should we take a look at a couple of examples? Say

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good. Okay. Do

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you have a favorite word? There's

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lots of good animals actually. For

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example, Schachoschwein. Schachoschwein. So

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if you break that down, der Stachl

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is a spike and das Schwein is

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a pig. So spike

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pig. The porcupine. Do

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you have any favorite words we can

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decode? I

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mean, we always have bahnhof. Der bahnhof.

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Yeah. So die bahn

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is the railway and

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der hof is a yard. So der

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bahnhof means... The railway yard. No,

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it's a train station. So

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if you see, we're looking at... If you looked at the

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pig, it's a form of pig or it's from some form

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of station and it's specific to the ones for trains. So

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if you look at the last one, you have a good

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idea what you're talking about. These also works

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if you... Some words

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are very similar. For example, we have

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sprachschule, grundschule, haubschule. They all have the word

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schule at the end. They are some form

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of school, but they specify the

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first word, specifies what kind of school it is.

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What other things do we need to keep in

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mind when we're talking about compound nouns? That they're

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not only made up of nouns. You

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can actually include different types of words.

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It doesn't have to be nouns

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that are put together to form

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a large compound noun. You can also

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put some verbs in there or

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adjectives or prepositions. Good

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point. I actually didn't know that until recently. I

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thought compound nouns are just lots of nouns. But yeah,

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there's other things you can put. I think the

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important thing is the last one is always a noun.

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Yes, good now. But then before that, you can actually

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put lots of different words. Do you have

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any examples for adjectives, for

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example? Yeah, for

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example, das Hochhaus. Yeah,

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the skyscraper, the high house. Yeah, you

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know, Hoch means high or tall, and

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then das Haus means house.