Re: Die Voegel (getting off-topic)

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> >No we're looking for a german equivalent to "avian" (adjectival form). I
> >find it hard to believe that there isn't one ("avisch"?), although I
guess
> >that's Anglocentric thinking for you.
> >
> >So there's no good way to translate "non-avian dinosaur"? ("unvogelischer
> >dinosaurier"?)

There is no good way. The constructions you suggest are logical but simply
don't exist. Unlike in English it isn't possible to simply take a suffix and
put it on _any_ word. The possibilities to combine are also limited (the
fact that "redraw" can exist in English is amazing, in German you can't put
foreign prefixes to indigenous words, but that's probably because English
has lost practically all its own affixes.)

> Not as far as I know (and exactly the same in Dutch, which I do know for
> sure), without sounding overly artificial. People would probably know what
> you meant, but initially you'd get some pretty funny stares.

The same in German.

> I think the main problem here is that of all modern languages, English has
> to largest vocabulary of all. There are so many words possible in general,
> everyday (or even more scientific!) English that are not readily
> translatable in lots of other languages without resorting to "artificial
> funny stuff" or multi-word descriptions.

Exactly. English holds the record.
It is however possible to connect nouns as needed in German. An extreme
example (with an unnecessary meaning) is
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskajütenschlüsselbund = {bunch of
keys [for the door] of the Danube Steamshipping Company captain's cabin}.
The word is a children's joke and is actually longer than that.

To return to the topic, I needn't worry much because there simply is hardly
any German-language cladism at the moment! :-)