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<title> The Phenomenon of Splitting of Compound Words -a causal analysis </title>
In English, we write fast food, summer sale, kitchen door etc, etc. One concept, put into two separate words. In Swedish, the system of compounding words is the opposite: we write snabbmat, sommarrea, and köksdörr, always as one word, never as two. Anyhow, during the recent years, the number of split compounds has increased immensely in all areas of the Swedish language: mostly in advertisements and on signs, but even in running text, and the words come out as snabb mat, sommar rea and köks dörr. In these examples, there is no danger of ambiguity, but what if somebody writes leverpastejen "the liver paté" as lever pastejen - which means something like "is the paté alive"?! As we can see, the results of split compounds can in Swedish become tragically hilarious. Why is it that this phenomenon has spread so quickly throughout our language?

The Swedish language writer Siw Strömqvist believes that it has its origins in how we learn reading and writing at school. In children's books, long compound words are often hyphenated to make reading easier, and to make the pupil see and understand the different parts of the word. Later, pupils learn to avoid hyphens everywhere except at the end of lines, they just remove them - and the result is two words instead of one.

There is also a graphic aspect of the problem. In advertisements, on shop signs and other places where the layout of the text must catch the reader's eye, it has always been more excused to split compounds. But why? Do advertisers think that the message is disturbed, or even lost, with a small hyphen? So it seems. Another reason of this misuse can be that sign makers want both parts of the word to appear equally clearly. For example, in Hamn Krogen "the Harbour Pub" the word Krogen, with a capital K, is more evident than in the correct Hamnkrogen. (But I promise, Swedes are not too stupid to understand such a "long" word!) Due to this, unhyphenated words in graphic contexts have been looked upon rather mildly, and as a consequence, we now find split compounds even in running texts.

We must also bear in mind the great influence of English in our whole society today. Many students get to read their course books in English, and new technical terms are coined all the time. This is a main cause of the problem with split compounds in Swedish. As I stated, English puts most of its compounds as two separate words, (though there is also the one-word concept, as well as hyphenating). Many compound words and concepts that come into Swedish today are direct loans from English, and the English two-word system is easily transferred: "fast food" becoming snabb mat instead of snabbmat, and so on. 

As we see, there are several possible causes of this language phenomenon. One could think it seems rather weird; fluent speakers and writers of Swedish, do they not have the knowledge to decide what is right and what is wrong when using their mother tounge? The answer, in many cases, is - no! There has to be, in addition to the causes above, another aspect: Time. Nowadays people do not have time to think of language usage. Every means of communication has to be fast and effective, and as long as the message is conveyed without misunderstandings it does not matter how. People have other, more important, things to think of than if to write one or two words - it is the message that counts. And of course, it is. But this does not mean that we have to misuse our language! Especially the splitting of compounds can lead to very mysterious ambiguities and misunderstandings...
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