I'll add Hmong Njua examples so that you can see how another language does it too.
Macnerd wrote:How would the English word "selfish" be created in an isolating language?
qa dlub (bad-characteristic
black
)
cuaj khaum (household-possessions
caught
)
I'm not sure about the etymology of either of those, so I may have the meanings of the individual parts wrong. Most of the above words have homophones (and potential tone sandhi opening up even more possible meanings) so the meanings I indicated are just guesswork on my part. I am pretty sure
qa dlub is a metaphor of some sort. Anyway, in both cases, the meaning of the word pair is different from the meaning of its individual parts, and is understood to mean "selfish" when the two parts are used together.
A selfish person can also be described as
muab hlub "loves to take" (lit. "take-love", where "take" [taking] is what is loved)
Macnerd wrote:Or "darkness"
kev tsaus ntuj (way dark sky)
kev muaj ntxoov ntxoo (way have shadow)
Macnerd wrote:or "friendship"?
kev ua phoojywg (way do friend)
[phoojywg is a loanword from Chinese 朋友]kev moog ua ke (way go do together)
As you probably can surmise from the above four words,
kev ("way") is used for a wide variety of verb-derived and adjective-derived nouns.
Macnerd wrote: the phrase "faster than you"
sai dlua koj (fast surpass you)
Macnerd wrote: in the sentence "He is faster than you.".
Nws yog sai dlua koj (he is fast surpass you)
linguoboy wrote:友誼 "friendship" ("friend" + "friendship")
So can 誼 mean "friendship" on its own then?
How is the meaning of 誼 different from the meaning of 友誼?