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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
187 points nalinidash | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.198s | 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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marcosscriven ◴[] 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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top_sigrid ◴[] 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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hengheng[dead post] ◴[] No.44004134[source]
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1. strken ◴[] 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.