I am reading a simplified version of Hans Fallada’s »Erzählungen« and this illustration helped lead me astray in the syllabification of an unknown word: die Schaufenstern. Because, in addition to there being a large Schaufenster – “shop window” – at the left of the image, there are also a number of Sterne – “stars.” Now if I’d be paying closer attention to the word’s spelling, I would have noticed that since the plural of der Stern is die Sterne, the word was not indicating a sort of star – Schaufen–stern as I was initially syllabifying it – but instead signaling the presence of a several of a specific type of window – Schau–fenstern!
[…] written before about the challenges of syllabification in learning German in Uh-oh, a stop and Breaking up is hard to do and this morning I finally figured out a mistake I was making in trying to figure out an English […]