Hi Jos,
There's a certain amount of ambiguity because it might not be clear whether an adjective is decriptive or part of the name.
Ironically, we had a thread on English bird names a while ago where I actually praised the advantages of the German compound-noun style names
However, I was thinking more along the lines of "it's nice to have, if it occurs naturally", and definitely not along the lines of "and if it doesn't comply, re-name the bird"!
To be honest, if I had to guess what motivates the re-namers, it's probably more convenience in their everyday work since adjectives get declined in German, and that exceeds the capability of MS Office's search function.
I've probably quoted Mark Twain before: "I'd rather decline two German beers than one German verb."
Morgenstern's poem "Der Werwolf" also makes fun of German grammar - though it should properly be un-translatable, I have to admit that I think the attempts on this site convey the spirit pretty well: https://arnoldzwicky.org/2010/07/01/der-werwolf/
Regards,
Henning
What's the problem with two-word names?
There's a certain amount of ambiguity because it might not be clear whether an adjective is decriptive or part of the name.
Ironically, we had a thread on English bird names a while ago where I actually praised the advantages of the German compound-noun style names
However, I was thinking more along the lines of "it's nice to have, if it occurs naturally", and definitely not along the lines of "and if it doesn't comply, re-name the bird"!
To be honest, if I had to guess what motivates the re-namers, it's probably more convenience in their everyday work since adjectives get declined in German, and that exceeds the capability of MS Office's search function.
I've probably quoted Mark Twain before: "I'd rather decline two German beers than one German verb."
Morgenstern's poem "Der Werwolf" also makes fun of German grammar - though it should properly be un-translatable, I have to admit that I think the attempts on this site convey the spirit pretty well: https://arnoldzwicky.org/2010/07/01/der-werwolf/
Regards,
Henning