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The Awful German Language (1880)

(faculty.georgetown.edu)
198 points nalinidash | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.207s | 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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oytis ◴[] No.44003276[source]
I don't know where the idea about the preciseness of German language comes from, especially in anything computer-related. For one, German language famously fails to distinguish between safety and security as well as between an error, a fault and a mistake. Whenever Germans discuss any software matters, they seem to be "code-switching" to English terms themselves.

Compounds have to be translated using multiple words, yes - that's just a few extra white space, it doesn't result in loss of precision.

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1. yongjik ◴[] No.44017814[source]
These things happen in any languages. English, for example, has "number" - which could mean cardinality of something (how many of something is here?), a number in the mathematical sense (real number, complex number, etc.), a digit (0/1/2/...), or a numeric identifier (room number, telephone number).

Also the infamous "free" bear vs. software.