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I've seen on this site, a few times, words like benché, finché, fintantoché, etc. and while all of these are words that I know -- they seem to be contractions of a word and -che.

A few examples:

benché =      bene + che
finché =      fino + che
fintantoché = fintanto + che
perché =      per + che
talché =      tal + che
tantoché =    tanto + che

Is there a pattern or formula I can follow for creating new words like this? It doesn't seem like Treccani or other sources I use talk about this topic specifically.

It seems like, in that list, some of the words are adjectives, some are prepositions -- is there a particular rule on which are allowed and which aren't? For example, I can't do con + che = conché can I?

Marco
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  • No rule in general. But of course, they are just an union of a word + che, and it gets the accent when it becomes a single word. Conché does not exist, and, honestly, I cannot imagine what its meaning could be. – Davide Passaretti Apr 10 '17 at 16:28
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    @DavidePassaretti But conciossiacosaché existed. – egreg Apr 10 '17 at 22:35
  • @Marco la tua intuizione è corretta, leggi qui: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/locuzioni-congiuntive_(La-grammatica-italiana)/, se vi sia una regola o meno non saprei e da madrelingua non sono a conoscenza. Tuttavia, prendere una qualsiasi parola ed unirla al che mi sembra un po troppo "insensato", del tipo peró come tu hai elencato ne esistono in italiano, mancano ad esempio nonché, checché, senonché, sicché, dacché, nientepopodimeno()ché (di Mario Riva: http://bit.ly/2qThoIB), ed altre ancora. – mle May 08 '17 at 18:06
  • Trovare una lista oltre a quelli su wiki, http://bit.ly/2qTEZtu, sarebbe interessante. Sul conché non so molto, mai incontrato, eppure su wiki si trova uno scritto (CTRL+F per cercare): http://bit.ly/2qTnxVe . Per il momento io se ne penso una la cerco nei dizionari o nel web e se viene o fu usata la uso anch´io "con moderazione"... – mle May 08 '17 at 18:06
  • @Davide Passaretti, una ricerca veloce con Ngram Viewer lista una serie di opere e scritti ove conché viene usato, http://bit.ly/2po1iFK , certo oggi molto meno "but it exists".. – mle May 08 '17 at 18:23
  • I do not think this construction is to be considered productive in today's Italian. So there are some words which are made this way, but you cannot just take a new word and do the same. Also, to me most of these words sound rather oldish (I would never write "tantoché" or "checché"). – Giovanni Mascellani May 09 '17 at 09:16
  • @mle ok thanks for the info. I might have been sloppy in my comment because I didn't search for any source at all – Davide Passaretti May 09 '17 at 18:22
  • @mle scusa, ho visto adesso che mi avevi scritto in italiano ;) – Davide Passaretti May 09 '17 at 18:23
  • Ciao! "Is there a pattern or formula I can follow for creating new words like this?" No, there's no such a pattern and, in general, you can't create "new words". 90% of time these compound words are conjunctions or adverbs. Hope it helps! – Mauro Ma Jul 10 '17 at 15:18

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While there may be some etymological history as to the origin of the compound words (derived from the meanings of their separate parts) it seems like the answer to the second part of the question is no; you can't just do this on the fly to make new words.

For a larger list of these compound conjunctions/adverbs, than the one I provided, see the links in @mle's comments.

Marco
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