("commission meeting") being read as "commission of the meeting" rather than "meeting of the commission" (normally spelled commissievergadering). The German spelling reform of 1996 introduced the option of hyphenating compound nouns when it enhances comprehensibility and readability. This is done mostly with very long compound words by separating them into two or more smaller compounds, like Eisenbahn-Unterführung (railway underpass) or Kraftfahrzeugs-Betriebsanleitung (car manual). Such practice is also permitted in other Germanic languages, e.g. Danish and Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk alike), and is even encouraged between parts of the word that have very different pronunciation, such as when one part is a loan word or an acronym. Compounding by language Classical compounds English compounds German compounds Sanskrit compounds See also Compound modifier Bracketing paradox Etymological calque Genitive connector Incorporation (linguistics) Kenning Multiword expression Neologism Noun adjunct Phono-semantic matching Portmanteau compounds Status constructus Syllabic abbreviation Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, South African placename Word formation Univerbation: a phrase becomes a word Notes References Kortmann, Bernd: English Linguistics: Essentials, Cornelsen, Berlin 2005. The Oxford Handbook of Compounding, eds. Lieber, Rochelle & Pavol Štekauer, 2009. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plag, Ingo: Word-formation in English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003. Scalise Sergio & Irene Vogel (eds.) (2010), Cross-Disciplinary Issues in Compounding'', Amsterdam, Benjamins. External links Compound word, encyclopedia.com Compounds and multi-word expressions in the languages of Europe by Rita Finkbeiner and Barbara Schlücker, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in English by Laurie Bauer, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in Finnish by Irma Hyvärinen, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in French by Kristel Van Goethem, 2018 Compounds and multi-word expressions in German by Barbara Schlücker, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in Greek by Maria Koliopoulou, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in Hungarian by Ferenc Kiefer, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in Italian by Francesca Masini, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in Polish by Bozena Cetnarowska, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in Russian by Ingeborg Ohnheiser, 2019 Compounds and multi-word expressions in Spanish by Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, 2019 Syntax Word coinage Linguistic morphology