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If you speak English, you've probably heard a least once in your life that German is super cool and amazing in a way that English is not because German has "a long word for everything" which they make by concatenating smaller words. The funny thing is that English does that too. It's just that when we write out lexical units like "girl scout uniform" or "public defender's office" or "bus terminal" we put the spaces in between the constituent parts, and in German they mostly don't. This is an issue of orthography, nothing more. The definition of "word" is not "something we write with spaces around it".
And "mental health care desert" is a great example - a lexical unit that's somehow more than the sum of its four morphemes. You need to understand the phrase as a whole.
That's actually not why I posted this. No, I posted this to go "WTF?" at their weird hyphenation.
So, first of all, outside of The New Yorker we've all been moving away from hyphenation. Secondly - and possibly as a result of this trend - nobody hyphenates "health care" to begin with. It's "health care" or maybe "healthcare". So if you're going to hyphenate, even though you probably shouldn't, that's not the part of the phrase you tag together. "Mental-health-care-desert" works, or possibly even "mental-health-care desert" (since "mental health care" is an existing concept and "desert" is clearly analogous with "food desert", but "mental health-care desert" looks deeply weird and unsettling.
It is very wrong and I do not like it. Nor, for the record, do I like the fact that people are suffering from mental health effects related to COVID.
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Thoughts On Flash (Obligatory xkcd)
Eight-Armed Underwater Bullies: Watch Octopuses Punch Fish
Meet India's lower-caste Hindu priest (Video)
The King Who Became a Pirate
Young Ravens Rival Adult Chimps in a Big Test of General Intelligence
Missing: When Red M&Ms Disappeared for More Than a Decade (Note the last paragraph. Truly, there is no detail so trivial that it won't be fact-checked by your audience.)
KFC launches game console that keeps your chicken warm
Gamification, Then and Now
Designer Can’t Stop Rearranging Everyday Objects into Visually Satisfying Compositions
Why East Germany is a map zombie
The Lonely Legacy of Spam
The Struggle to Mend America’s Rural Roads
The daring plan to save the Arctic ice with glass
For Scientists Who Study Virus Transmission, 2020 Was A Watershed Year
Your Old Radiator Is a Pandemic-Fighting Weapon
AP PHOTOS: Then-and-now images show New Year's Eve contrast
Dad Got the Vaccine, but No One Else Did — Yet
Here’s the latest on COVID-19 vaccines
China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins
In pandemic America's tent cities, a grim future grows darker
Amid coronavirus outbreaks, migrants face the starkest of choices: Risking their lives in U.S. detention or returning home to the dangers they fled (This is disgustingly unjust.)
Hospital ICUs are filling up. It’s even worse than it sounds.
Rooted in racism: the origins of qualified immunity
The CIA's Afghan death squads
Refugees Come Under Fire as Old Foes Fight in Concert in Ethiopia
'Our children die in our hands': Floods ravage South Sudan
If you speak English, you've probably heard a least once in your life that German is super cool and amazing in a way that English is not because German has "a long word for everything" which they make by concatenating smaller words. The funny thing is that English does that too. It's just that when we write out lexical units like "girl scout uniform" or "public defender's office" or "bus terminal" we put the spaces in between the constituent parts, and in German they mostly don't. This is an issue of orthography, nothing more. The definition of "word" is not "something we write with spaces around it".
And "mental health care desert" is a great example - a lexical unit that's somehow more than the sum of its four morphemes. You need to understand the phrase as a whole.
That's actually not why I posted this. No, I posted this to go "WTF?" at their weird hyphenation.
So, first of all, outside of The New Yorker we've all been moving away from hyphenation. Secondly - and possibly as a result of this trend - nobody hyphenates "health care" to begin with. It's "health care" or maybe "healthcare". So if you're going to hyphenate, even though you probably shouldn't, that's not the part of the phrase you tag together. "Mental-health-care-desert" works, or possibly even "mental-health-care desert" (since "mental health care" is an existing concept and "desert" is clearly analogous with "food desert", but "mental health-care desert" looks deeply weird and unsettling.
It is very wrong and I do not like it. Nor, for the record, do I like the fact that people are suffering from mental health effects related to COVID.
Thoughts On Flash (Obligatory xkcd)
Eight-Armed Underwater Bullies: Watch Octopuses Punch Fish
Meet India's lower-caste Hindu priest (Video)
The King Who Became a Pirate
Young Ravens Rival Adult Chimps in a Big Test of General Intelligence
Missing: When Red M&Ms Disappeared for More Than a Decade (Note the last paragraph. Truly, there is no detail so trivial that it won't be fact-checked by your audience.)
KFC launches game console that keeps your chicken warm
Gamification, Then and Now
Designer Can’t Stop Rearranging Everyday Objects into Visually Satisfying Compositions
Why East Germany is a map zombie
The Lonely Legacy of Spam
The Struggle to Mend America’s Rural Roads
The daring plan to save the Arctic ice with glass
For Scientists Who Study Virus Transmission, 2020 Was A Watershed Year
Your Old Radiator Is a Pandemic-Fighting Weapon
AP PHOTOS: Then-and-now images show New Year's Eve contrast
Dad Got the Vaccine, but No One Else Did — Yet
Here’s the latest on COVID-19 vaccines
China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins
In pandemic America's tent cities, a grim future grows darker
Amid coronavirus outbreaks, migrants face the starkest of choices: Risking their lives in U.S. detention or returning home to the dangers they fled (This is disgustingly unjust.)
Hospital ICUs are filling up. It’s even worse than it sounds.
Rooted in racism: the origins of qualified immunity
The CIA's Afghan death squads
Refugees Come Under Fire as Old Foes Fight in Concert in Ethiopia
'Our children die in our hands': Floods ravage South Sudan
