Talk:Hamburger

I dont think this can be a German adjective. That would be "hamburgisch". Mutante 02:11, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

All of these German demonyms in -er can be used adjectivally, e.g. Hamburger Hauptbahnhof, Hamburger Hafen, Hamburger Geschichte, etc. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:05, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

RFV discussion: July–August 2015

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Hamburger (Adjective)

Adjectives like "Berliner" and "Hamburger" exist (e.g. [duden.de/rechtschreibung/Berliner_Adjektiv] & [duden.de/rechtschreibung/Hamburger_Adjektiv]), but the declension is doubtful: The predicative usages as "er ist Hamburger [predicative adjective]" shouldn't exist.

• *"er ist Hamburger [predicative adjective]" looks like "er ist Hamburger [substantive; = person from or living in Hamburg]", so "Hamburger" should usually be parsed as an substantive in this case.
• Something like *"Der Hafen is Hamburger" (instead of something like "Es ist ein Hamburger Hafen") sounds awkward.
• [www.canoo.net/services/OnlineGrammar/InflectionRules/FRegeln-A/Texte/A-Invar.html] states: "Viele unveränderliche Adjektive können nur attributiv verwendet werden. Dazu gehören die unveränderlichen geographischen Adjektive auf –er (Elsässer, Jenaer usw.)" -- that is: Adjectives like "Berliner" and "Hamburger" can only be used attributively (and not predicatively or adverbially).

-80.133.103.97 10:31, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

There exists a template Template:de-decl-adj-inc-notcomp-nopred (used on a whopping two entries) which could express this, but we might be better off just adding something like "invariable, attributive only" to the headword line. These fail even more tests of adjectivity than wood (discussed above); they don't inflect, they don't compare/grade, they don't appear predicatively... - -sche (discuss) 18:42, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I've fixed Hamburger. If you find any more -er adjectives with erroneous predicative lines in their inflection tables, please either fix them or let me or someone else know. :) - -sche (discuss) 19:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Now I can do that (copy it from Hamburger), but earlier I wasn't completely sure whether or not such adjectives can be used predicatively, and earlier I didn't know about the template. Thanks for fixing the entry. -84.161.50.63 21:37, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

But at least German gives us one straightforward way to tell whether it's an adjective or a noun compound - it's Hamburger Dialekt not Hamburgerdialekt. Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:55, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Even that test doesn't help us here, because these -er forms could plausibly be genitives of nouns (which would be written separately, like "Königs Krone" used to be), as mentioned here. (I am tempted to undo that removal; I think the information is pertinent.) - -sche (discuss) 22:57, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@Smurrayinchester: Well, maybe forms like "Hamburgerdialekt" do/did also exist? (Maybe because of hypercorrection regarding "Deppenleerzeichen".)

@-sche: I agree with you that the information is pertinent, and even pertinent if one just considers 21st century German: According to modern German spelling rules adjectives are usually written with a small letter, such as grüne Wiese, großer Mann, kleines Kind, berlinerisch, englisch, but Blauer Planet, Weißes Haus. (It is "modern German spelling rules" as earlier maybe forms like Berlinerisch and English existed, similar to English capitalisation.) So if words like Hamburger would be adjectives, it would be logical to spell them like hamburger by modern German spelling rules. And this still holds, even if one would say that these words ones where genitive forms of substantives, but are adjectives nowadays. namens/Namens originally is the genitive of Name, but nowadays only the spelling namens is official (in wordings like "ein Hund namens Beethoven"). So I partly undid that removal, and also added some further information and references. Please feel free to add further annotations (like: what did other grammarians or what do modern grammar books says?) or to improve my wording. -eXplodit (talk) 13:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Resolved, I guess, although I still think just a headword-line note "invariable, not predicative" might be preferable to a huge table that has the same string in all fields. - -sche (discuss) 20:57, 16 August 2015 (UTC)