You’re thinking too much about it - Anglesey is the English name for Ynys Môn, and is pronounced “Angle-sea”.
Every now and again my Welsh grandmother (nearing 100 years old) will sound off about something or someone in Welsh–I love to hear her do that! Beyond that, she’s taken me to Welsh ‘conferences’ called…uh…Gee-mahn Gee-vann-ees (spelled phonetically) which are essentially Welsh people getting together to sing songs and drink a touch.
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There may be some piss being taken above…iechyd da!
I made a brief stop there and I’m still disappointed I never got to see the rapid whirlpool. Well, at least I have an excuse to go back there. Maybe I’ll pass through when I make yet another futile attempt to visit the Dylan Thomas museum.
Eh, not quite.
A compound is usually a root and qualifiers (that might themselves be compounds): A fire-truck is a specific kind of truck. A tunnel-fire-truck is a special case of (a special case of (a truck)), and so on and unpronounceably forth. Mashing sentences together doesn’t have the same zoom effect.
In fairness: ghoti.
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Why forcefully? Why not in good nature? Bad day?
Eh, yes.
Which are existing words, as I said.
And yet, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
Apparently, German and Welsh have different rules for compound words. It’s worth reading Mark Twain’s essay on the language (pdf), which he seems to have had a grim respect for in spite of its infuriating rules:
I can attest to the fact that translating these “sentences” is miserable, especially when it isn’t clear whether the writer themselves has a clear idea of the overall meaning. You can’t use Swype with a lot of compound words either, which is a pain.
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I am sorry that that turned out so aggressive, but honestly, you started out being wrong and your follow-up didn’t exactly help. Do you have any significant formal background in linguistics? There is so much that you are either missing or ignoring. Again, if you do have a real argument, then I would be interested to hear it, but things like those sentences without spaces make it appear that you are in over your head and you are just figuratively sticking your tongue out.
Here’s the question. Are compound words comprised of other words that are used in other instances or are they singularly unique? That’s the crux of what I was saying.
I’m a cunning linguist
and a master debater.
They contain, among others, free morphemes which can constitute a word on their own or part of a word.
Are you maintaining that compound words never count as “true” words? E.g. is “goldsmith” a real word or some kind of phrase?
If you accept that word or similar ones, what distinguishes them from the German ones that you find unconvincing? Is it a problem related to productivity? Presumably you are comfortable with productive processes generating phrases. Do you draw a line when it comes to words? I can see how you could get away with that in English.
Nope. Never said that at all. True words are what evolve linguistically, including compound words. Some languages evolve ever-long compounds by way of addition, others not so much.
I don’t find them unconvincing, I accept them as words. All I’m saying is that they’re composed of separate words which can be translated as a sentence. Welsh and German use transitions in their compound words, English very rarely does, it uses nouns, verbs and adjectives more commonly for these and keeps them concise, making for a shorter descriptor.
That people seem amazed that the weather forecaster can pronounce the long name of a train station is to forget that they can pronounce a sentence themselves with relative ease.
Ah, now I understand. I really, truly apologize.
I read too much into your remarks and assumed that you made a far stronger claim than you did. I interpreted them as more general technical statements and had serious issues with them. In retrospect I see that you only meant them in pretty narrow context without any of the baggage that could be implied by taking them literally. I think I even agree with your point.
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And I apologise for perhaps not being clearer.
But I do enjoy the advance and parry of debate, it forces me back to the books to brush up on my understanding of the subject, so is a learning experience. I can also become quite cheeky when I sense that people may be getting riled, but that’s my mischievous nature.
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I’m genuinely touched that you guys (@KarlS, @pixleshifter) showed the commitment to draw back from something that was spiraling into rancorous venom, restate your core positions, work out the issues, and find that you really didn’t disagree so much after all. Kudos.
Can we please hire the two of you to team-teach the rest of the world how to get along?
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Now show 'em the love. 
(I kid! Someone mentioned recently a reply is really best.)
If we can come together over a 30 second internet video about a town with a funny name, then surely we can…no, I guess I don’t suppose that gets us very far.
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