hamantashen

[Benjamin Fortson]

>
> I don't know German well enough to know what a German would say about the
> transparency of "Mohntaschen," but I know that what is transparent to
> foreigners is sometimes opaque to natives (e.g., CUPBOARD). I remember very
> well remarking to a German friend how clever I thought that the German word
> "der Handschuh" 'glove' is. He had no idea what I was talking about.

Point well taken; but it's interesting that the only two cases in German
that I know like this are Handschuh and Handtuch, both of which have
undergone some phonetic change that may have triggered the opacity (in
Handschuh, the -dsch- is an affricate, potentially obscuring the morpheme
boundary, and in Handtuch, the double dental has been degeminated). These
considerations don't enter into the picture with Mohntaschen, where the
word is not only the exact sum of its parts but there is no funny
phonology either.
        Doubtless there are other cases like Handschuh and Handtuch that I
don't know about, but I'd wager they either no longer mean the literal sum
of their parts or there has been a bit of phonological change to obscure a
morpheme boundary.

Ben