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Kind of, I could think of a few examples in english:
outlook : look out
Overlook : look over
Overtake : Takeover
Upkeep : Keep up
There might be others that I can’t remember right now. I don’t know if for you most of these are cheating since they become two words instead of just being one.
In Portuguese, I really can’t remember any examples
All your examples are changing gramatically between noun and verb.
Germanic languages tend to use the second word in a compound as the noun and the first as a modifier.
Blue ocean is an ocean that is colored blue where ocean blue is a shade of blue.
Conversely snowshoe is a shoe meant for use on snow. Shoesnow is nonesense rather than snow stuck to your shoe.
fwiw "takeover" is a noun; "take over" would be the verb.
"Lookout" would also be a noun, though their example of "look out" is a verb, yes.
Obrigatório:
Um português? Na minha app de memes, comunas e Linux?
Translation for those who aren’t Portuguese speakers:
Hi? I think you likely shouldn’t trust me. Install Linux Mint today
CARALHO!!!!
Translation: Install Nyarch Linux
Um português? Na minha app de memes, comunas e Linux?
Translation for those who aren’t Portuguese speakers:
Hi? I think you likely shouldn’t trust me. Install Linux Mint today
...
I don't think that's what it says, but I don't speak portuguese...
A portuguese person? In my app for memes, communities and linux?
We have a few cases like "estar bem" (being well) and "bem-estar" (wellbeing) or "antigo regime" vs "regime antigo" but they are much rarer, and usually involve moving an adjective to before the noun or verb.
You also have “homem rico” vs “rico homem” (rich man vs good man)
French has verlan, a slang in which words are reversed in a similar way, so that we say them differently, but they mean the same thing. "louche" means "suspicious", but is often said as "chelou".
It's not the same effect, but a similar structural pattern.
It's not even always swapping syllables. Some people say "meuf" as slang for "femme", even though the word has only one syllable.
I'm not a French speaker from birth, so I don't know how common this slang is. I know we find it near Paris.
You can hear it in the TV series HPI, where the lead character uses it quite often and the show is set in Lille, which is about 200 km from Paris.
If we apply strict rules that both parts have to be directly linked, i.e. no space, I suspect English will have fewer examples of this. Because it doesn't always write combos without a space. Lighthouse vs. house light, but horserace vs. racehorse. I think the "proper" Germanic languages, i.e. unencumbered by Norman invasion, will probably have more.
German has shit like:
Fußballverein (football club) and Vereinsfußball (football organized in clubs, differs by one letter). Hausboot (houseboat) and Bootshaus (again an extra s). Turnhalle (school gymnasium) and Hallenturnen (indoor gym class, annoyingly an extra n this time), etc.
Lagerregal and in reverse: Lagerregal :D
I don't think German Stichwörter (compound words) count because it's just switching which is the adjective and noun part of the compound.
The Japanese examples that OP gave aren't much different. 花火 is literally flower-fire and 火花 is fire-flower. You switch them around, one part takes precedence while the other gets a supporting role in the compound.
In English, the example I would proffer is "attorney general", which as-written refers to the chief lawyer that advises a state (sometimes exceedingly badly). But if reversed, "general attorney" could plausibly refer to a lawyer that can take on any type of legal work, not self-limited to ones within a particular specialty (eg divorce law, personal injury, copyright, etc).
This is in the realm of postnominal adjectives, although not all reversals will yield recognizable phrases, and some will be nonsensical, like "the incarnate devil".
I have a suspicion that the closest that English gets to the Japanese kanji-switch might be in technical writing, specifically for the name for pharmaceuticals. Such names are often order-specific, because they draw from the chemical structure of a molecule. From the minimal Japanese that I know -- thanks anime! -- I'm aware that the word for "carbon monoxide" is composed of one carbon and one oxygen. But if I were a chemist or pharmacist, I might recognize the root components in the names "paracetamol" and "acetaminophen", which are the same thing.
Funny enough, I find scientific terms to be the easiest* to correctly guess the meaning of the first time I see them because a lot of them follow the similar rules and/or are word-for-word translations of the Latin/Greek root words. Especially if they're not traditional vocabulary.
When I looked at the nutrition label and saw 炭水化物 ((char)coal water change substance), I immediately figured "carbohydrates." I felt proud.
*assuming I already have knowledge of the English equivalent
Well, you can say two different things by saying either "To be taken seriously" or "To seriously be taken".
Kind of in German? Because the last "word"-part in the word determines what it really is and the separate parts of the word stay with the same meaning most of the time, so the end result is often connected to the meanings of the word parts it is made up of.
As example:
Fahr = driving-related
Fahrt = the drive
Plan = map, plan
Bus = ... bus
Fahrplan = timetable for trains, busses etc
Planfahrt = drive that is according to some plan (instead of outside of the planned timetable)
Busfahrplan = timetable for busses
I can't think of things in English that are very similar. There might be some compound words that happen to be usable both ways (eg overtake, takeover), but I'd call those mostly coincidental.
Aztecs.... Tlalnepantla- Pantlatlalne...na man....Netzahuatcoyotl - Huatcoyotlnetza - Huatnetzacoyotl? ....nah that's not gonna work! Itzle-Zleit nah.
How about Spanish? Oyo-Oyo! Yes! Oyo means hole. How about Pepe-Pepe yeah but epep no. Oro-oro that's gold. Can't think of any where the letters are not symmetric.
So Kanji is generally Chinese characters. Usually the traditional variant.
However, for Kingdom in Japanese it is 王国, but in Traditional Chinese it's 王國... However, in Simplified Chinese it is 王国... So does Kanji line up with Simplified Chinese at times and Traditional during others?
Theres no rule in kanji. you'd just have to know. Its what makes it so challenging.
lovely
I think it sometimes works for technical terms.
The one that comes to mind is microphotography (taking very small photographs) and photomicrography (taking photos of very small things)
Similarly, historical cartography is maps of history, while cartographic history is the history of maps.
I'm going to go with: foot/toof or feet/teef. Good anadromes that also stand at opposite ends of the body. Except for the scientific units (eg, ohm/mho), they seem to generally be unrelated words more by chance than intent.
Czech has interní (internal; mostly in professional settings) and niterní (core, inner; mostly psychological, spiritual), both of which are synonyms to vnitřní (internal; general use) in their own ways. It's a coincidence, the etymologies are completely different.
There's "honey bee" if you want to specify that you're talking about the type of bees that produce honey, and there's "bee honey" for the honey they produce, as opposed to the kind made by wasps.