Going to be a bit difficult to explain on a Reddit interface, but I’ll try.
So let’s say you want to write a relatively long word like, say, “poinsettia”, but you realise you don’t have enough space to write it at the end of the line and so you need to carry the remaining part of the word onto the next line. How would you do this?
In German, you aren’t allowed to split a word in the middle of a syllable, so you’d be able to write poin-settia or poinset-tia, but you wouldn’t be able to write something like po-insettia or poinse-ttia. An important part of the [90s German spelling reform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1996?wprov=sfla1) actually related to the rules on how to split a word in two. Under the old rules, if you wanted to split a word with a ‘ck’ in it, you had to change the c to a k, so the word *Acker* (“field”) would become *Ak-ker*. Under the new system, you’d write *A-cker*.
As far as I know, English doesn’t have fixed rules like this, or at least you wouldn’t be taught them in school. So while “po-insettia” might look clunky and your marker might tell you off for not sufficiently planning a-head when writing (dividing words in the middle is just generally discouraged), it wouldn’t be considered grammatically incorrect. I’m sure typesetting software has rules about where to divide words, but I just looked through The Economist’s style guide and they appear to say nothing on the matter.
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As a German I always assumed all languages divide words by syllables. Interesting to learn that this is not the case.
By the way, my German teacher was really pedantic about splitting words. In all texts that we wrote, we always had to write to the very right of the line and split the word if necessary. We should not leave a big white space and write a long word (of which there are many in German) on the next line. This way he wanted to force us to demonstrate that we knew the splitting rules.
We have that same syllable rule. But no letters that need special treatment.
Same as in German, you put a break at the end of a syllable. But I don’t think this is a rule as much as a guideline.
We split words at syllable boundaries. The only rule is if there are any ‘ss’ or ‘rr’ you split those. So ‘carro’ would be divided as ‘car-ro’.
In Italian, words are divided by syllables, although there is a rule that was hard to remember in my school days, namely that when you break a word at a double consonant, the double must be divided. For example, ‘tutto’ (everything) is divided as ‘tut-to’.
Same in Polish. Though I always preferred making the last word ^(smaller) so it would fit.
Of course. You can’t split syllables, diphthongs or hiatuses, or digraphs (ch, ll, rr).
Always by syllable, but there are also some constraints, for example you can’t just leave one letter on either side (so *A-cker* wouldn’t fly).
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As a native English speaker, I learned you split on syllable boundaries as well, just like you described for German. I think you’d be hard pressed to find any written text in English that does not do it this way.
Yes there are rules, and quite a lot of them:
[https://www.vlaanderen.be/team-taaladvies/spellingregels/woorden-afbreken/woorden-afbreken-1-regels](https://www.vlaanderen.be/team-taaladvies/spellingregels/woorden-afbreken/woorden-afbreken-1-regels)
[https://www.vlaanderen.be/team-taaladvies/spellingregels/woorden-afbreken/woorden-afbreken-2-lijst-met-lettercombinaties](https://www.vlaanderen.be/team-taaladvies/spellingregels/woorden-afbreken/woorden-afbreken-2-lijst-met-lettercombinaties)
Generally it’s fairly similar to the German rules, but with lots of specifics and a bunch of exceptions.
It officially works the same way here in Sweden but it is extremely rare to actually see people split words in writing. Most people just start the word on a new line if it won’t fit in its entirety on the previous one.
Basically the same as in German, it’s called a “césure”. This should also be separated by syllable, and if possible it is best to have it split between the prefix and the root of the word.
Not an English expert but pretty sure the rules you described apply to English too. After a quick search:
>If the word you need to split is clearly made up of two or more smaller words or elements, you should put the hyphen after the first of these parts. Otherwise, you put the hyphen at the end of a syllable.
From [Collins Dictionary ](https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/easy-learning/when-do-you-use-a-hyphen-in-english#google_vignette)
In Czech the words can only be divided between syllables as well. However these days people don’t really do it anyway and prefer to start writing a word that is too long for the remaining space on a new line.
>How would you do this?
Well, there are 6 rules in Croatian language how to do that. Easiest to explain would be to divide it per syllable, watch out for the exception and you are fine.
There are some exceptions like **CVIJET** (flower). You’d think it goes **CVI – JET**. As division is per syllable which is determined by the vowel. But, the yat reflex is “**IJE**”. And it can’t be divided. In this case, you can’t divide the word **CVIJET**.
The same goes for any word that contains “**IJE**”. You do not split “**IJE**” into two syllables. **IJE** must be part of one syllable.
Another example **PIJESAK** (sand). You can’t divide the “**IJE**”, so it can’t go **PIJ – ES – AK** it must go **PIJE – SAK**.
As an English speaker, I would just split the word whenever I ran out of space. I’ve never heard of any rules. However, it is definitely taught that it’s preferable to just go in into a new line and write the full word.
Side note. To me poinse-ttia would be breaking it between syllables so I would fail the German rule even if I tried apparently.
By syllables with the exception of compound words in which case you can divide it in the word boundaries. For example the compound word εκστρατεία would be divided as εκ-στρατεία and not as ε-κστρατία.
(English) It would be very odd, to me at least, to see it written as “po-insettia” rather than as “poin-settia”, etc.
In Finnish you split words by syllable without any exceptions
Let’s take Вестернизация
You would split it like this Вес-тернизация,
Вестер-низация
(Alot like german)
In Turkish, you divide by vowels or sounds. Sounds in Turkish revolves around vowel sounds. Without vowels, there is no sound, therefore, you would only separate from sound group.
A-ra : Call (it)
A-ra-ba : Car
Ar-aç : Tool
Söy-le: Tell (it)
Ku-a-för: Hairdresser
You don’t split syllables and you can’t leave only one letter on any side.
There was a spelling reform since I was taught this, so it might not be accurate anymore, but here:
– keep syllables together
– no leaving single letters alone
– hard to pronounce consonant assemblies must be separated (these are well defined but one can also easily test them before use – if it requires a semi- vowel in the middle to get it off your tongue, it’s hard to pronounce; example in the book was nc in word sonce (sun))
I really like how the Germans use such clear language. So much better to stick words together than to make up a new word every time.
In Dutch and Flemish it is done to a lesser extent and the English haven’t tried at all.
>So let’s say you want to write a relatively long word like, say, “poinsettia”,
It’s so cute to me, as a Dutch speaker, you think this is a long word. Word agglutination allows almost endless chaining of morphemes.
>In German, you aren’t allowed to split a word in the middle of a syllable, so you’d be able to write poin-settia or poinset-tia, but you wouldn’t be able to write something like po-insettia or poinse-ttia.
Same in Dutch. We split between syllables.
– Rododendrons – ro-do-den-drons
– Sinaasappelsap si-naas-ap-pel-sap (orange juice)
– Varkenskoteletjes – var-kens-ko-te-let-jes (pork chops/cutlets)
Learning syllable splitting helps you pronounce longer words. It’s not just useful for sentence splitting when writing.
No, there are two competing standards.
Newspapers generally use the guidelines by the news agency TT where it’s based on syllables, and prose use the standard in the de facto standard glossary SAOL where it’s based on morphemes.
I never paid much attention in English but I’d find it bizarre if a word wasn’t split on a syllable.
In Italian there were quite some rules on that and since I didn’t want to get bad points for such stupid mistake I’ve always just went next line without splitting the word XD
I could only remember the double consonant rule so only split those 😛
For English, I recommend a spelling dictionary, like the Oxford Quick reference Spelling dictionary. The rules are complicated and counter-intuitive, and even experienced proofreaders can make mistakes, so it’s normal to check. As for automation, while there might be good programs that can do this, I have yet to see one. The one that is integrated into Microsoft Word is notoriously terrible. DO NOT RELY ON IT!
Russian has a whole set of rules:
1. You split by syllables: ма-ли-на
2. You can’t leave a single letter hanging: осень, not ~~о-сень~~
3. Letters Ь, Ъ, Й must be kept with the preceding letter: май-ка, not ~~ма-йка~~, подъ-езд, not ~~под-ъезд~~ or ~~по-дъезд~~ (see also 4,5,6)
3. Consonant clusters at the end of the stem or at the stem-suffix boundary can be split however you want: се-стра, сес-тра, сест-ра. Splitting at the morpheme boundary is the preferred way, though: баск-ский is better than ~~бас-кский~~ or ~~баскс-кий~~.
4. You can split the syllable if it’s a prefix that is followed by a vowel: по-дучить, поду-чить and also под-учить (под- is a prefix)
5. But if the prefix is followed by Ы you can’t do that: ра-зыграться, разы-граться, not ~~раз-ыграться~~ (раз- is a prefix)
6. If the prefix is followed by a consonant, you split at the morpheme boundary: под-смотреть, not ~~по-дсмотреть~~ or ~~подс-мотреть~~
7. When a consonant is doubled, you have to split between them: тон-на, ван-на, not ~~то-нна~~, ~ва-нна~
Swedish is a Germanic language, so I think we do it more or less the same as German. It sounds like we use the same rules based on your post.