Dojan

Yeah! I wonder if it’s because of the prevalence of English media here in Sweden. We unlike the Germans don’t really do much dubbing unless the target audience is children/families.

I don’t know about German, but in Swedish it looks really messy if you sunder your compound words. In general I think people know what you mean regardless, but you can end up with peculiar double meanings. There are plenty of signs, notes, and what have you that people have posted online for a laugh.

Off the top of my head

• Gå lättpackad i fjällen
  • Travel lightly (as in luggage) in the mountains
• Gå lätt packad i fjällen
  • Travel slightly intoxicated in the mountains
• Sjukgymnast
  • Physiotherapist
• Sjuk gymnast
  • Diseased/Sick gymnast
  • Addendum. Sjuk could also be used as an emphasizer just like in English. Think “bro that’s a sick outfit” kind of thing, so it could be read as “awesome gymnast”
• Årets sista svenskodlade tulpaner
  • The last Swedish-grown tulips of the year
• Årets sista svensk odlade tulpaner
  • The last Swede of the year cultivated tulips

It’s also worth noting that the tones can be different, so if you “hear” the words as you read them, then “lättpackad” and “lätt packad” sounds different.

Well, no. It wouldn’t be the first kanji of English. Kanji is the Japanese pronunciation of 漢字 (hanzi), where 漢 means han/China and 字 means character/letter. Ergo, it makes no sense to call it “the English language’s first and only Chinese character.”

If you need to use a Japanese word to describe this, then 絵文字 (e mo ji; picture, character/symbol) fits better, but we already have several words for that, like pictogram or pictograph. One could argue that smileys fall into this category as well. So perhaps it’s a smiley.