Forum: Author Hangout

I should have just made a pun, shouldn't I!

Nah, leave that to richardshagrin. I'm sure he will drop one soon.

So it's home world or homeworld? Why not home-world?

HM.

Is the meaning of home-world different from homeworld and home world?

Home-world is a planet full of occupied houses. :)

Glad to hear that it isn't just a world of homies. :)

My other thought was some future uber-rich dude with a mansion the size of a small planet.

My other thought was some future uber-rich dude with a mansion the size of a small planet.

How about a Death Star sized yacht called "Home-World"?

I can't answer this, English isn't my first language. Back when I had English classes in school the teachers claimed teaching "Oxford English". When I years later visited Oxford, I met no speakers of this "Oxford English". ;-)

In school I was told English doesn't concatenate nouns like German instead in most cases the nouns remain separate. In German "Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän is a valid word, it means "captain of steam ships on the Danube".
BTW, using american spellings were regarded as errors in tests—my home town was part of the american occupied zone.
In my last year in school they tentatively admitted american English existed and we could use it, but then had to stick to it! They told us concatenation of nouns is more usual in american English due to influences of immigrants. But that was then, more than 50 years ago.

I can't answer this, English isn't my first language.

None of us for whom English is our first language can adequately answer that either.
In English there is a trend over time for multi-word phrases, especially nouns, to become accepts as single words. It takes some time for dictionaries to catch up, and there can sometimes be an intermediate step where hyphenating the words is common.
There is no real logic to how fast that process takes place.
I think the best we can do is rely on our dictionaries whenever in any doubt - not because they are right - but because they will give us the same answer every time so our stories will spell the same words consistently.
I find dictionary.com very useful for this. If you enter something as a single word, the term is "closed", it will return its preferred spelling, which might be open (two words), closed, or hyphenated.

BrE is slightly less inclined to use closed forms than AmE. For example, there are few words beginning with the prefix 'non' that are not hyphenated in BrE dictionaries, and few that are not closed in AmE dictionaries. However, I'm not aware of many other differences between when BrE and AmE join a prefix (i.e. not a complete word) to another word. Both seem to prefer the closed form almost all the time.

Sorry, but the best answer I can give is pick one dictionary and follow what it recommends whenever you are in doubt. :(

They told us concatenation of nouns is more usual in american English due to influences of immigrants. But that was then, more than 50 years ago.

I live in western Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Outside the larger cities, it's an ethnic patchwork. Some areas are predominantly German while other Scotch-Irish. The English and Irish tended to stick to the urban areas, as did the eastern Europeans who came after the 1870's (along with the new wave of Germans after the unification).

The county to the south of me is almost all German, with many still speaking the language at home and church up until World War One, even after a hundred or more years in America.

The version of English spoken around Pittsburgh is thus influenced by Scottish and German and to a lesser extent others such as Polish or Slovak.

Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän

Q1. Do you really spell that with three consecutive F's?
Q2. Do we have Germans to thank for the word 'fart'?

Q1. Do you really spell that with three consecutive F's?

Yes.

Q2. Do we have Germans to thank for the word 'fart'?

No; I think a late 13th-century Scottish warrior with diarrhea invented the fart. His name was Bravefart or something like that.

No; I think a late 13th-century Scottish warrior with diarrhea invented the fart. His name was Bravefart or something like that.

Okay. I'll investigate which side of my family tree he is on.

I'll investigate which side of my family tree he is on

I'm a Guthrie descendant.

Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän
Q1. Do you really spell that with three consecutive F's?

Nowadays YES. Schifffahrt is Schiff + Fahrt. When I went to school the rule was to drop one of the three consecutive F's (or T's,...), but in case you had to divide the word at the end of the line it was 3 F's again: Schiff-fahrt.
18 Secretaries for Education (from all 16 german states and Austria and Switzerland) have to vote unanimously for any change in orthography and grammar. Those changes are then binding upon all schools, universities, and administrations. The intervalls between major changes are mostly decades. First was in 1876, then in 1901, finally in 1996 with minor changes in 2004, 2006 and 2011 because the 1996 major change was a disaster. To leave triplets was introduced in 1996.

Q2. Do we have Germans to thank for the word 'fart'?

No. English 'fart' is German 'Furz'(noun) and 'furzen'(verb) ; both have the same germanic root.
The german verb 'fahren' and it's noun 'Fahrt' are used for car (drive), bike (ride), bus (ride), ship (sail), boat (row) ...

HM.

18 Secretaries for Education (from all 16 german states and Austria and Switzerland) have to vote unanimously for any change in orthography and grammar. Those changes are then binding upon all schools, universities, and administrations.

Too much government control.

Unlike in America, where ever single citizen invents their own words

The wisdom of the crowds!

We try all of them out and get to see which works best.

Perhaps we just can't accept two forms of a word meaning exactly the same thing. Perhaps it is part of our nature to have only one form for any one meaning. Perhaps that is why this thread struggled to find a difference between the two forms. Does that mean we created a difference to satisfy our inner need for there to be a difference?

Whatever drug you started taking recently, please keep on taking it. :-)

To explain ... Some days ago I posted a comment that I thought what you had posted was very good advice, and CW added a bit later much the same with a note along the lines of "(I never expected to say that to you)".
I think your comment which I just quoted is quite insightful and interesting. There was another post you made in between that I felt the same about.
Thus ... Whatever new drug you've started taking, it's working. :-)

Muddying the pool, I can imagine a scenario where every character has a Home World but there are many, many homeworlds.

I was asking whether the central planet, the administrative capital, is named 'Homeworld'. If so, I would have other characters talk about their individual 'home world' where they were raised.
If he needs a proper noun, I would call that 'Homeworld', and then always use 'home world' whenever a common noun is needed.

Otherwise, everyone means 'my home planet' when they refer to "homeworld".

I would think that it's where a race or species originated, not necessarily where a particular individual was born and raised.

I would think that it's where a race or species originated, not necessarily where a particular individual was born and raised.

That sounds intuitively natural to me, that characters would refer to "home planet" for where they originated and "home world" for where their species originated.
But as long as an author is internally consistent they should be okay.