in reply to Re^4: Confused by some var names in perlref
in thread Confused by some var names in perlref

German famously pastes words together to get new ones. The one that I use as illustrative for english speakers is "genital traffic" = Geshlechtsverkehr, = sex.

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Re^6: Confused by some var names in perlref
by LanX (Saint) on Dec 08, 2018 at 00:35 UTC
    Sorry for destroying the myth, but ... :)

    Geschlecht normally means "sex/gender", you'll find it on every passport without meaning "genital".

    Verkehr also means intercourse, like in social contact.

    It's a pretty formal word best translated as "sexual intercourse" and actually needs the same amount of space

    Geschlechtsverkehr sexual intercourse

    Please note that it's not that hard to decode because the "s" was inserted to glue the two words.

    (compare Sankt Petersburg which becomes "Sankt Peterburg" (Санкт-Петербу́рг) in Russian.)

    German is very constructive, even kids can intuitively decipher words which are normally Latin/Greek monsters in English or French.

    like hypoglycemic = unterzuckert (under sugared)

    Cheers Rolf
    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
    Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

      I stand corrected. My german is truly rusty....

        No worries, all these meanings of Geschlecht are confusing,

        I suppose they come from loan translating Latin "genus".

        And indeed long compounds are a real problem when swiping on a mobile device ;)

        Cheers Rolf
        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
        Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice