The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)

186 points nalinidash | 1 comments | 16 May 25 04:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.325s | source

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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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marcosscriven ◴[16 May 25 08:22 UTC] No.44002985[source]▶

>>44002326 #

I think the issue of German compound nouns is seriously overegged. In almost all cases, it’s essentially the same as English, except with some spaces. It’s not like suddenly a short compound word expresses something that couldn’t be in English.

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1. Tainnor ◴[16 May 25 09:46 UTC] No.44003464[source]▶

>>44002985 #

It's true that English uses basically the same method to create compound nouns, but quantitatively it's a difference. Long compounds consisting of 3, 4 or more parts are completely common in German and cause usually no trouble in understanding, whereas English is far more likely to split them up by the introduction of words such as "of", "for", etc.

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