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    The Awful German Language (1880)

    (faculty.georgetown.edu)
    186 points nalinidash | 15 comments | 16 May 25 04:09 UTC | HN request time: 1.088s | 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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    marcosscriven ◴[16 May 25 08:22 UTC] No.44002985[source]▶
    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. top_sigrid ◴[16 May 25 10:10 UTC] No.44003598[source]▶
    This is so true. My favourite example is when Top Gear made fun of the German word "Doppelkupplungsgetriebe" by spelling it, when it is quite literally the translation to "dual-clutch transmission". It stil is hilariously funny, but you cannot conclude that German is weird with these words.
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    2. amiga386 ◴[16 May 25 12:10 UTC] No.44004449[source]▶
    Use of Latin has nothing to do with Americans or whiteness. It's a holdover from the legal and medical professions, and you'll find bird-spotters and gardeners doing it too thanks to Carl Linné's / Carolus Linnæus's love of Latin.

    See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_French - "attorney", "culprit", "grand jury", "tort", "voir dire" and so on

    I think what you're trying to say is that people who are pretentious and middle-class (who in your experience are affluent white Americans) like to reach for Latin words because they sound grander. Orwell had a lot to say on that in Politics and the English Language:

    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

    > Pretentious diction [is] used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biassed judgements. [...] Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones

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    3. MrJohz ◴[16 May 25 12:13 UTC] No.44004476[source]▶
    On the other hand, as a Brit, I find German abbreviations oddly cutesy and childish — although I think that's just preferring what one grew up with!

    That said, I don't think you can discuss German jargon without talking about Beamtendeutsch. I'm fairly comfortable reading in German — I'm slower than I am in English, but I can, say, read a book in German. Then I'll get a letter from some Amt somewhere and it'll be utterly unintelligible. Worse, I'll pass it to my German partner, and she has no idea what it says, and we'll need to go and find someone to translate the document we've just got back into regular German. I'll take "appendicitis" any day of the week over having to learn whole new grammar constructs just to interpret an official document!

    4. strken ◴[16 May 25 12:29 UTC] No.44004618[source]▶
    In fairness to appendicitis, it dates back to the 1800s and the medical profession only stopped speaking Latin at the end of the 1700s.

    The English lay term is probably something like "bursten belly" that would also cover everything from hernias to intestinal rupture.

    5. BalinKing ◴[16 May 25 13:23 UTC] No.44005210[source]▶
    I don't think "appendicitis" signifies affluence—it happens to enough people that the word has become very commonly known and used.
    6. davedx ◴[16 May 25 13:47 UTC] No.44005500{3}[source]▶
    Also accounting!

    In English: "assets and liabilities" (Old French derived). In continental languages: "actives and passives" (medieval Latin accounting vocabulary).

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    7. anonfordays ◴[16 May 25 13:55 UTC] No.44005575[source]▶
    >the (very white) American latinization of jargon that signifies affluence ... Habeas Corpus. All these terms have German names that are embarrassingly straightforward.

    BlueSky brainrot take. Habeas corpus predates modern Germany.

    "Habeas corpus originally stems from the Assize of Clarendon of 1166, a reissuance of rights during the reign of Henry II of England in the 12th century.[12] The foundations for habeas corpus are "wrongly thought" to have originated in Magna Carta of 1215 but in fact predate it."

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

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    8. dragonwriter ◴[16 May 25 14:04 UTC] No.44005684{3}[source]▶
    > Use of Latin has nothing to do with Americans or whiteness. It's a holdover from the legal and medical professions

    The fact that the language has such a degree lf these holdovers has something to do with Americans (or, rather the Anglosphere more generally), which is why the GP can note that it is a difference from German, where once upon a time; Germany had the same use of scientific, clerical, and professional Latin in the past, after all.

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    9. amiga386 ◴[16 May 25 14:13 UTC] No.44005772{4}[source]▶
    Well, perhaps we can congratulate the German-speaking countries for throwing off the yoke of Latin!

    It did not happen in the Anglosphere because England was run by the Normans for hundreds of years, during which the common law system grew enormously...

    Let's also not forget ecclesiastic Latin! Significantly less common in the HRE since Martin Luther's protestations!

    10. hengheng ◴[16 May 25 14:38 UTC] No.44006049{3}[source]▶
    I don't understand what argument you're trying to make, but I'm almost certain you did not understand mine either.
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    11. hengheng ◴[16 May 25 14:44 UTC] No.44006130{3}[source]▶
    Orwell said it better than I could, naturally. My point isn't that the professions can be traced back to origins in other languages. Nor do I mind a lingua franca for a scientific discipline. My gripe is that jargon, colloquial use and even common parlance haven't evolved away from it.

    There could have been a movement away from old inherited terms. But there wasn't. And I have no better idea as to why than classism.

    (German has a word for that! Jägerlatein, "hunter's latin", as a term for blowing up terminology to keep away the working population and restrict the game to the upper classes that are better educated, and frankly have a lot of time for that BS.)

    12. diogocp ◴[16 May 25 14:46 UTC] No.44006141{4}[source]▶
    Habeas corpus comes from English common law, not Roman law. It was never used in German law.

    Latin terms are still used in German legal writing. Just not this one.

    13. anonfordays ◴[16 May 25 15:05 UTC] No.44006379{4}[source]▶
    >American latinization of jargon that signifies affluence ... Habeas Corpus.

    Habeas corpus predates the United States of America by hundreds of years. It has nothing to do with "American latinization." You should remove that from your comment.

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    14. zahlman ◴[16 May 25 17:07 UTC] No.44007713{3}[source]▶
    >Use of Latin has nothing to do with Americans or whiteness.

    My first thought was "it's especially strange to come out swinging against 'whiteness' in order to defend... native German language?"

    15. BobaFloutist ◴[16 May 25 22:53 UTC] No.44010517{4}[source]▶
    That's funny, in English "actives and passives" are videogaming terms!