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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
189 points nalinidash | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.402s | source
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rawbert ◴[] 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 ◴[] No.44002397[source]
Care to share an example or two?
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bradley13 ◴[] 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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andoando ◴[] No.44002559[source]
I mean is this really one word though, or a bunch of words just spelled with no spacing?
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1. watwut ◴[] No.44002606[source]
It is one word in German. It has one article, Germans talk about it as about a single word and treat it as a single word for grammar purposes. You can use it as a single noun in any sentence.

But it also odd example for this, because it is long as hell anyway already and additional spacing that English equivalent would require is just opportunity to wrap. It is just harder to read, but English equivalent would be easier to layout.

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2. mejutoco ◴[] No.44003820[source]
> It is one word in German

Is it in the dictionary?