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    The Awful German Language (1880)

    (faculty.georgetown.edu)
    186 points nalinidash | 12 comments | 16 May 25 04:09 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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    rawbert ◴[16 May 25 06:21 UTC] No.44002326[source]▶
    As a developer working in a German company the question of translating some domain language items into English comes up here and there. Mostly we fail because the German compound words are so f*** precise that we are unable to find short matching English translations...unfortunately our non-native devs have to learn complex words they can't barely pronounce :D

    Most of the time we try to use English for technical identifiers and German for business langugage, leading to lets say "interesting" code, but it works for us.

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    titanomachy ◴[16 May 25 06:36 UTC] No.44002397[source]▶
    Care to share an example or two?
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    bradley13 ◴[16 May 25 06:50 UTC] No.44002473[source]▶
    I hope he will give us an actual example from his work. But meanwhile, here's a classic example:

    The Donau is a river. On this river is a steamship (Dampfshiff): Donaudampfschiff

    This ship is part of an organisation (Gesellschaft) that manages cruises (Fahrt): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft

    The ship has a captain (Kapitän) who has a cap (Mütze): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze

    On this cap is a button (Knopf): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopf

    You could extend this example: The button is colored with a special paint (Farbe), which is produced in a factory (Fabrik): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopffarbenfabrik

    And the factory has an entry gate (Eingangstor): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopffarbenfabrikeingangstor

    In English, this would be a huge sentence, all in reverse order: The entry gate of the factory that produces the color for the button on the captain's cap of the ship belonging to the cruise organization on the Donau.

    The German is a lot more compact, if sometimes hard to parse :-)

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    1. throw310822 ◴[16 May 25 07:11 UTC] No.44002566[source]▶
    In fact, with added spaces, works fine in English too (since English is also a Germanic language):

    the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button.

    And extended:

    the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button's colour factory's entry gate.

    EDIT: Let's not forget to mention its Java implementation, which goes full German:

    DonauSteamshipCruiseOrganizationCaptainButtonsColorFactory

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    2. ggm ◴[16 May 25 07:55 UTC] No.44002834[source]▶
    The German is only worse because we want to treat it worse, the sentence isn't much longer and they're broadly equal in conceptual cost.

    Which isn't surprising since Anglo Saxon is at the heart of the non French bits of English.

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    3. bashkiddie ◴[16 May 25 07:55 UTC] No.44002836[source]▶
    Awesome example.

    Germans are allowed to write compound nouns in hyphens

    Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschafts-Kapitänsmützenknopf-Farbenfabrik-Eingangstor

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    4. marcosscriven ◴[16 May 25 08:23 UTC] No.44002993[source]▶
    Exactly. It’s not like you can even hear the absence of spaces in one or the other. It’s purely a writing choice.
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    5. ggm ◴[16 May 25 08:38 UTC] No.44003085{3}[source]▶
    Australian ad of 30+ years ago:

    avagoodweekend and dontforgetaboutheaeroguard

    6. umanwizard ◴[16 May 25 08:50 UTC] No.44003150[source]▶
    It’s not considered prescriptively correct, but often nowadays people just write them with spaces (like in English), especially on phones, because hitting spacebar makes spellcheck/autocorrect kick in.
    7. nathell ◴[16 May 25 08:58 UTC] No.44003203[source]▶
    Which is a combination of lisp-case and CamelCase. Neat!
    8. pjmlp ◴[16 May 25 08:59 UTC] No.44003211[source]▶
    I rather see the Objective-C one, https://github.com/Quotation/LongestCocoa
    9. mejutoco ◴[16 May 25 10:50 UTC] No.44003813[source]▶
    I believe some dashes would make that even more correct English.

    Normally whatever is acting as an adjective ie "donut-eating relative" but with such a long example it seems a bit trickier.

    10. cmrdporcupine ◴[16 May 25 18:13 UTC] No.44008329{3}[source]▶
    And I think the use of spaces between pieces of nouns in English has more to do with the fact that -- in comparison to German -- the pronounciation is so unpredictable from the spelling that not having the visual indicator between pieces could leave you completely lost -- "what word is this?" Whereas German has very regular and consistent rules of pronounciation that map closely to spellings, so once habituated you can scan it from the page and spit it out more reliably.

    Still, having grown up with English as my first language and (partially) learned German as a young man, learning German gave me more appreciation for English. Which only grew once I studied a bit of Anglo-Saxon. I love our language, there's just something about its character.

    A spelling reform would be nice (though entirely impractical) though.

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    11. rendang ◴[16 May 25 19:12 UTC] No.44008855[source]▶
    The river has an English name - the Danube
    12. yurishimo ◴[16 May 25 19:32 UTC] No.44009018{4}[source]▶
    If you enjoy English and German but want something with a more modern twist, might I suggest Dutch? I started learning it about 3 years ago and it's very regular in terms of spelling/pronunciation. Once you learn the irregular verbs (the most common ones, like in any language it seems...), many things will just "make sense", especially if you already know English and German!