Ok, so without looking (and forgive me my vocabulary is really lousy from disuse)
My strategy for compound words is usually to try to break up the word, starting at the end, since mostly they are nouns with a bunch of adjectives stuck in front.
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän
So kapitän is easy since it’s a near cognate for captain.
Gesellschaft looks like a word i used to know, but I can’t remember it.
Schiffahrt - i don’t know this one, but it looks like schiff (ship) plus fahren (to go) - shipping?
Ampf - no clue
Donaud - I feel like this must be modifying ampf, because it doesn’t look like a word on its own, but since I don’t know ampf I am stumped.
So my guess is someone in charge of something to do with shipping.
Ah. That makes sense, I wasn’t thinking about proper names and split the word in the wrong spot. Still i think german compound words aren’t that big of a deal once you get used to parsing them.
Ok, so without looking (and forgive me my vocabulary is really lousy from disuse)
My strategy for compound words is usually to try to break up the word, starting at the end, since mostly they are nouns with a bunch of adjectives stuck in front.
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän
So kapitän is easy since it’s a near cognate for captain.
Gesellschaft looks like a word i used to know, but I can’t remember it.
Schiffahrt - i don’t know this one, but it looks like schiff (ship) plus fahren (to go) - shipping?
Ampf - no clue
Donaud - I feel like this must be modifying ampf, because it doesn’t look like a word on its own, but since I don’t know ampf I am stumped.
So my guess is someone in charge of something to do with shipping.
According to my German speaking friend, it means:
The captain of a steam ship on the Danube River
a Dampf Schiff is a steam ship, and the Donau is a river (the Danube)
Ah. That makes sense, I wasn’t thinking about proper names and split the word in the wrong spot. Still i think german compound words aren’t that big of a deal once you get used to parsing them.
and you should try it when it’s all written in Germanic script and shit, yeah parsing hehe