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.
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.
This is true, but some German compound words acquire a meaning that doesn't simply derive from their component words. Well-known ones include Kindergarten and Weltschmerz. This is often the case for domain-specific terms (Gestaltpsychologie, Bildungsroman).
Sure, but again those concepts typically will still have an equivalent way to express them in English. For example, Kindergarten is nursery in en-GB. I'm not entirely sure what the others actually mean, but Bildungsroman is probably "coming-of-age novel" which is a common literary genre.
The biggest challenge I've had when writing multilingual user interfaces aren't lacking a way to translate, but just practical issues like dynamic string construction or where the structure of the UI somehow doesn't work in another language, or when a given string is used in multiple parts of the app in the English version, but the non-English versions need different strings in different places[0], or just where an English single word translates into a whole sentence (or vice versa).
[0] For example some languages don't have a commonly used word that means "limb" - i.e. arm _or_ leg. A bit niche, but if you're doing something medical-related it can cause issues.
The English term for 'Bildungsroman' is actually... 'bildungsroman' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman
> coming-of-age novel"
Technically it is correct, but in doing that you lose the essence of the word “roman” and of the whole influence French culture had over the whole of Europe until not that long ago, including in Germany. It is in these cases where it is quite obvious that Britain was an island at the edge of Europe, culturally and not only.
I don’t think the argument that English's book comes from novel as in new and in French book comes ‘of the roman vernacular’ and that this changes the meaning in some profound way. I don’t speak German, but it sounds like it the meaning has been fully lost and now it just means of the French. (unless you know all three languages and then I guess it has more meaning) At most, it is vaguely interesting to think of the etymology when hanging on a word, I guess more so if you know multiple languages
Your objection to translating "Roman" as "novel" seems to be that Roman is closer to the French word for novel than "novel" in English is? But this seems to be more an objection to English using the word "novel" instead of something closer to the modern French term, and not actually an objection related to the translation.
This seems like a slightly strange objection to me; I would have thought the actual semantic problem lies with "Bildung", in that a Bildungsroman generally involves some kind of learning/development/improvement, whereas a coming-of-age novel does not necessarily involve this.
> It is in these cases where it is quite obvious that Britain was an island at the edge of Europe, culturally and not only.
I mean this is a very weird claim, which assumes that Europe is culturally homogenous (e.g. I think you will find that Britain and France are culturally closer than France and Slovenia).
> I mean this is a very weird claim, which assumes that Europe is culturally homogenous (e.g. I think you will find that Britain and France are culturally closer than France and Slovenia).
Yeah I don't get this either. The English culture and language both have clear influences from French, courtesy of the Norman invasion (and other influence points over time of course). It's weird to point to Britain of all places as not being influenced by French culture.
> e.g. I think you will find that Britain and France are culturally closer than France and Slovenia
Not sure about Slovenia but there's a lot more France here in Romania (from where I'm from) compared to the France that is present in Britain, that is if we ignore the 1200-1300s Norman direct influences. But that's a different discussion, related to how the insular Brits cannot really comprehend Napoleon's work to the fullest (as a reminder, what is now Slovenia was indeed, if even for a short period of time, under Napoleonic France, with Ljubljana being indeed the capital of what was then a French autonomous province [1])
Slovenia's also been occupied by the Romans, Bavaria, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Fascist Italy, and was part of Yugoslavia. I think any French influence is probably a bit diluted.
> Technically it is correct, but in doing that you lose the essence of the word “roman”
This isn't specific to concepts like "Bildungsroman." You're essentially saying "this word isn't just a word, but a word with implicit cultural context."
That's true of pretty much every word. Hell, translating "ao" from Japanese, you'd think is so simple: blue. Except it can also mean green because in Japanese there is less historical, cultural distinction between blue and green. So obviously green traffic lights are called "blue" in Japanese, not green.
You'll never get a perfect translation of anything that's longer than a couple words. The point of translation is getting close enough. Translating Bildungsroman as "coming of age novel" gets you so close, that if your conversation hinges on the actual nuance, you're almost assuredly talking to someone who will understand what Bildungsroman means, so you just use that word.
EDIT: One of my friends at uni did his thesis on the difference between Japanese "natsukashii" and English "nostalgic." I've always thought about that as the perfect example of how any simple translation is fraught with cultural complications. There are certainly things I would call "nostalgic" but I'd never call "natsukashii," because nostalgia can come with sadness, but natsukashii never does.
All words have history through etymology. Only a few dozen people actually care about it though.
Don't forget:
gefingerpoken
mittengraben
springewerk
blowenfusen
poppencorcken
spitzensparkenNone of those are actual German words. For some of them, I found references that these words could potentially be used in Pennsylvania, but most of these words are not even German, even when you split them into their components.
The reference you were looking for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights
From your link there:
> written in a mangled form of German.
If you show this to anyone who knows German, they will recognize that this was written by someone who doesn't.
I believe the comment you replied to is what is known as a "joke".
Given that the commenter left another comment about having been misinformed, I don't think it was a Joke.
You do have to draw a distinction between compounding, where joined words gain their own meaning (some English examples: breakfast, football, highlight), and agglutination, which is the habit of the language to join words together, not necessarily creating a novel word that has its own meaning and dictionary entry, which is what Mr Twain is grumbling about in the article.
>Jardin d'enfant.
All languages have noun-phrases. In this case, they are transparent.
> Kindergarten
Don't know about that. Garten, garden, a nurturing environment for raising delicate flowers. Children's Garden. Kindergarten.
Garten / garden derive from garte / yard, which just meant an enclosed outdoor space.
I find it really interesting that in Russian they clearly took the same concept but just made it out of Russian words instead. Kindergarten in russion is детский (children's) сад (garden).
There are other words that are straight from German, for instance бутерброд (sandwitch).
iirc at least 3 Russian empresses (and also Russian duchesses) started out as German princesses. The court spoke French. And Russia looked to the West as a role model and source of expertise for modernization and development. It could have been one or the other but France post revolution didn't have princesses to spare, so there is also the political aspect in terms of an absolute monarchy.
Would be interesting to know when these words entered Russian vocabulary: before or after Napoleon.
"From its inception, Russia has desperately needed foreign professionals—to teach Russians about governance, manufacturing, military, mining, and other trades. The Dutch, Swedes, Brits, and French were among the foreigners who came to Russia. But Germans certainly dominated, becoming a privileged nationality in Russia.
"The ruling Romanov dynasty, which shared a lot of the German bloodline, became a branch of the Oldenburg dynasty under the name of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. Many of its members were born in Germany and spoke Russian with an accent. Germans, especially the Baltic ones, rapidly advanced through the ranks of the Russian society thanks to their talents, persistence, discipline, and loyalty to the throne (as of 1913, approximately 2,400,000 Germans lived in Russia)."
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/08/27/russias-lov...
It's worth noting this is normal in language. Consider the highly non-technical English "lighthouse," which has acquired a far more specific meaning than "a house made of light" or "a house that produces light" or "a house that weighs very little."
I'm not familiar with "blackboard" being a valid term for any board that is black, but specifically one used in pairing with chalk to be written on.
etc.
Weltschmerz and Bildungsroman relate very closely to their compositional meaning. Sure, they have become slightly more specialised (a novel about a teacher wouldn't be a "Bildungsroman", I guess), but it's not like you can't make an educated guess.
Also, the fact that collocations can acquire more specialised meanings than just the sum of their parts is hardly unique to German (in English, the "theory of relativity" means something very specific and isn't used, e.g., for moral or epistemic relativism).
You find the same in any language. A «coming of age» story is not about birthdays.
And in any case, "this concept is untranslatable" is nonsense, usually born out of xenophobia or jingoism. "MY language is more expressive than those OTHERS."
Every language has technical words that "cannot be translated." But when we say "cannot be translated," what we mean is "it is unsafe to expect a foreign reader to know what the term means without explanation." It's not that it can't be translated; it's that there isn't necessarily a single-word equivalent. I agree with the original suggestion that these can be a challenge to translate elegantly. But, speaking as a lawyer by training, the solution is obvious: you begin your technical document by describing novel technical terms. Then you use them in your document without explanation.
Consider "sushi": how do you translate that? Nowadays, we don't. But before it was widely known, you could've just said "a sour rice dish" and be done with it. (For those of you thinking "no wait, sushi is raw fish," no. That's sashimi. Sushi is vinegared rice mixed with other stuff, often. (Sushi can be with egg, pickled plum, crab, beef, etc. none of which are fish.)
Makizushi = rolled sour rice
Nigirizushi = sour rice to be gripped
Chirashizushi = sour rice with stuff scattered in it
> Chirashizushi = sour rice with stuff scattered in it
And it annoys me to no end how many restaurants serve "chirashi" with completely plain, non-vinegared, non-seasoned-in-any-way rice. Just "throw some sashimi on some white rice".
+1 Baumwolle is my fav.
It's a good one ("tree wool"), but Buschwolle/Strauchwolle (bush/shrub wool) would probably be closer to accurate.
In case any anyone's still wondering: the word is cotton
x100 this. You can sort of derive the meaning of a complex word if you grasp one or two parts of it and offer a hacked together English translation, even if it doesn’t map directly. I find that people online who haven’t actually studied German like to meme this often.
The Latin-derived cases from the article, on the other hand, are the truly maddening, and makes you appreciate the simplicity of English grammar by comparison.
> The Latin-derived cases
They're not Latin-derived, they come originally from Proto-Indo-European (which had even more cases). Many other Indo-European languages retain cases (Slavic languages, Greek, etc.), but were lost in English and the Romance languages.
What does come from Latin is the way we name and analyse these cases traditionally.
Interestingly, several different ways of analysis are in use. I first learned German as a third language and then moved to a German-speaking country, and realized that the way German-speaking people think about their grammar is often different from how foreigners think about the German grammar. The rules end up with the same result, but the angle can often be different.
For instance, we first learned what a direct object was (something which is done with/to, e.g. in “I ate the ice cream”, “the ice cream” would be direct object). Then we learned that in German, the direct object is declined in accusative (which primarily affects the article, and adjective declination). This was consistent across multiple classes and teachers and books and schools. But my German German teachers had never heard of the concept “direct object”; for them, only the “accusative object” existed. Of course, the accusative object would be in accusative, but also, its presence would signal e.g. whether to use “haben” or “ist” for “is” in certain situations (for which I learned an entirely different set of rules that they had never heard of).
You would think that this is because my native language (Norwegian) has different concepts, but our entire way of teaching Norwegian grammar was uprooted at some point pre-WW2 _precisely to map well to German_, to prepare students for German classes when that was a more common second language than English was. (There were tons of things I never understood why were important until I got to apply them to German later.) So you'd think they'd match better.
We learn direct and indirect object in school as well it’s just not what people remember because they either had to grind the Latin for a test or the number (which js stupid on many different levels).
To be technical, "accusative" etc. are cases (i.e. forms of words) while "direct/indirect object" are grammatical roles - those are different categories. In German, for example, the Dative case can mark an indirect object (although some verbs may require the Genitive case for its indirect object), but it can also have other functions. This is even more pronounced in e.g. Latin where the different cases can have a wide range of different functions, not just direct/indirect object.
This is possibly not something that is taught very explicitly in school, but it's what the terminology means. (Or at least it's how I was taught. Linguistics being such an old discipline used to analyse so many different languages means that different people will use terminology differently.)
I know. But like I said, my German German teachers (all three of them, IIRC) used “Akkusativ Objekt”.
Sure, you can say three nouns in a row in English. But can you then make them into a verb? Or and adjective? What happens when some of the three words in English already are in a form that also parses as a verb or an adjective?
English is a bastard language and it shows in its grammar.
I wonder 'where' these compound words end up in an n-dim embedding space (relative to their German and say English 'parts'). In fact this brings up the interesting question of tokenization of the long German compound words, and how all this plays out in German to English (and reverse) LLM translation and text generation.
My favorite example is "kartoffellerntepause", it's the German word for the school break in southern Idaho for potato harvest.
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.
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.
I really agree. I think this is particularly peculiar to English speakers because the mix of origin in our vocabulary is such a grab bag.
Windschatten is an exception.
Yes, "windshadow" one is more descriptive than "slipstream". (At least for me.)
"Rain shadow" is a common idiom in English. "Wind shadow" is not because English has multiple dedicated words for this concept, including "lee" [2] as well as slipstream.
I worked on a case management system for a few years that dealt with Norwegian criminal law, and we did the same. Technical terms and conventional parts of method identifiers (like getFoo, setFoo, isFoo and such) were in English while the domain terminology was left in Norwegian. It looks a bit weird when you first encounter it, but honestly it was fine. Especially for a domain with as much emphasis on nuance and as many country specific details as the legal domain anything else would be a terrible idea IMO. Not only would it be really hard to translate many cases, it would probably make the code harder to understand and in some cases even cause misunderstandings.
Yeah nothing worse than entering a translated to English portal for Dutch tax purposes. Because those English words also ended up in Business Dutch but then got another meaning. Dutchlish, or at least the original term in parenthesis) is really preferable to anything else.
Words like beamer for projector... but isn't that similar between all countries? Even within English-speaking countries? You don't know what some Australian-specific or AAVE word means until someone tells you, no matter where you're from. Every version of English is a dialect of English so long as it's still a complete language (having semantics and all that)
Same as a friend of mine who works for NAV. There's a whole lot of long-ass variable and function names because they use the Norwegian name for whatever they are calculating. It makes sense for them though, as the ones who review your code are lawyers...
I work with a lot of Germans and have noticed this. For me to provide the English translation that is the most accurate I have to dig deep. The unabridged English dictionary has plenty of words but I feel slightly guilty providing them with a word which I know is the best fit but which they will probably never encounter anywhere else, and where most English people would just not know this word. The definition is often quite contextual and nuanced, hinting at (for example) the reliability of the thing that is described by it, or the way it is used (or was used) in society (e.g. for good or ill). The "baggage" I suppose.
I've had this same discussion with a colleague at my job in the Netherlands. He will ask me to choose from a list he provides for variable names. Usually I need to ask for more context and then I end up leaning towards the more "well known/normal" option, both because it still fits and will be more likely to be understood another decade from now when we've probably both moved on and are not there to answer anymore questions.
Discussing the words is a fun way to take a little break during the workday, but I don't consider it more than that.
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.
There very much was a well defined distinction between safety and security: Sicherheit and Schutz, as in Datensicherheit and Datenschutz.
And yeah, you can see with those two latter terms where the issue lies :)
Those two were traditionally actually used this way in the safety and security context - I think I even have the script for the "Datenschutz und Datensicherheit" lecture I had on uni in the '90s lying around somewhere in the attic.
But their meaning has changed and muddled so much over the years - probably not helped by the fact that "Sicherheit" is much closer to "security" in colloquial usage, and probably vice versa(?) - that they stopped being useful and used in this context.
I meant the difference between safety-critical and security-critical systems, safety goals and security goals etc. It's all Sicherheit in German.
Schutz is protection. Can refer to both I guess. E.g. Datenschutz would be about security, while Arbeitsschutz is about safety.
Datenschutz is about legal protections for personal information (protection of the rights of the individual). Datensicherheit is about technical measures to ensure security of information (security).
I always thought it was from philosophy, Kant and the likes. Order, precision, detail (allegedly!).
Similarly for English and French, seen as practical and artsy, resepectively, due to say Hobbes/Smith and the likes of Baudelaire or Rimbaud.
Whether any of that makes any sense is a problem for the philologists, I suppose.
I also work in Germany and the code-switching has nothing to do with the question of precision, but simply because English is the technical language for CS. Also, Germans apparently like everything American, so some of their own words which originally existed in German (and have exactly the same meaning as their English counterpart) have pretty much fallen out of use, cf. computer / Rechner.
It's not that German lacks precision per se but most of the jargon originated in the US or even England, and rather than coming up with German translations, it has become custom to use the original English. Which, frankly, makes everyday tasks like looking up documentation or debugging a lot easier.
Compare this to French where the Académie Française makes sure that you don't have to use these nasty English words! Yikes. And if there isn't a good French translation, they just make one up - my favorite example: the word "bug" (as in programming) has a made-up "French" alternative: "bogue". As far as I understand, no-one uses it, but it exists.
Also between painting and drawing. And between pumpkin and squash lol
Painting - Gemälde
Drawing - Zeichnung
Picture - Bild
You were thinking of Bild, I guess?
Mahlen
painting = Malen
a painting = Gemälde
drawing = Zeichnen
a drawing = Zeichnung
Mahlen is grinding, you mean Malen
Fixed. I should have gotten a clue when I spelled Gemälde without the extra h.
Native German here: In my experience the issue is in most cases not compounds, but the domain language.
There are terms that are specific to certain domains and used by everyone to precisely name a certain process. Belegprüfung, Indexpartizipation, Zessionär, etc.
Sometimes germans outside of your field of work don’t know these terms either, but those who do all use the same term. If you use english expressions you have to replace a domain term with one of multiple possible translations, making it confusing in many cases.
We have the same with translated documentation. Ever read the german version of Azure Docs? I have no clue what they are talking about until i switch to the english version.
Totally get where you’re coming from—German can feel like a surgical tool when it comes to precision, especially in law or certain engineering domains where it’s still dominant. But from my (very subjective) experience, that sharpness doesn’t always carry over to areas like machine learning or modern software architecture.
Most cutting-edge research and discussion happens in English, and honestly, I find it pretty tough to have a deep technical conversation in German—even with other Germans. The language just doesn’t seem to reflect the latest advancements in those fields.
I used to agree with the “German is super precise” sentiment—especially when it came to legal or philosophical stuff. But the more I’ve immersed myself in English, the more I’ve seen how nuanced and expressive it can be too. And ironically, German law often ends up being a case-by-case “interpretation party” anyway.
Don’t get me wrong, I still appreciate the poetic weight of words like Müßiggang—there’s real beauty there. But when it comes to actually getting things done or discussing complex, evolving ideas? I’m not sure German gives us much of a practical edge anymore.
> I find it pretty tough to have a deep technical conversation in German
...loan words?
Dutch doesn't have a word for computer other than computer, SSD is SSD, machine learning is machine learning, WiFi is WiFi (with a 50/50 split on people saying it the english or the dutch way), generative AI is generatieve AI and I don't think anyone would count loaning generative as-is as a typo either (maybe if you work for a publisher with a strict rulebook)
And from there you apply the normal grammar. To do stuff on the computer is computering (or, actually, we make verbs with -en so it's actually computeren) and machine learning applications are machinelearning-toepassingen. At least, to me it's normal to mix languages like that. It's also not like we avoid the word fingerspitzengefühl or überhaupt just because they once came from german, or like the english don't throw in a kindergarten or zwischenzug where applicable. It just gets mixed into the existing language
Have to think of a translation for an EinfacheBeansFabrikBewusstAspektInstanzFabrik
What is “Simple Beans Factory Aware Aspect Instance Factory” supposed to actually mean?
That does not seem like a concept at all, let alone an actual German word. “Beans” is not even German, there is no German word spelled “Beans”.
You have not programmed Java with J2EE / Jakarta EE right?
(me neither but that is the kind of factories you build there ... at least in folklore)
it's obviously a joke, because that would be a technical term not a business one.
> * English for technical identifiers and German for business langugage, leading to lets say "interesting" code*
So it's code-switching code.
Good reference to a higher level concept. Your linked article was a fun jumping off point.
Maybe you could look into establishing a proper-technical-terminology-direct-literal-translation-enforcement-protocol that uses "-" and translates German words more or less literally. The effect should be very obvious for German speakers, and more obvious than German words to English speaking folks.
> unfortunately our non-native devs have to learn complex words they can't barely pronounce
I simultaneously know too little about German and have seen too much horror stories on German that I cannot identify whether this is but a typographical-error or actually pursuant to DIN orthographical standards
Back in the day, my programming techniques professor said something similar.
Technical entities get English names, domain entities get German names.
I also dimmly remember a German version of VBA.
In my experience, problems is not with German as a language, but with Germans requiring to use their hard language, I live in neighboring country and since like 2010, nobody bothers to learn German anymore, (some small percent still learn, ok) and everyone who I know rather works in different country because of this. Like Netherlands, still hard language (multiple) but they don't expect you to learn it when working for multi-national company.
They don't expect it, but the amount of opportunities that will open up for you if you can speak the local language should not be discounted. I've found that my professional circle has been widely broadened because I can speak the local language. As an immigrant from a non EU country, the peace of mind that I get from knowing that I can leverage my own personal growth into more professional opportunities is worth the "hassle" of learning a new language.
As an added bonus, learning a new language has been one of the most enriching hobbies I've ever begun! Exercising a new part of my brain and opening myself up to new cultural experiences is something I'm very grateful for. If anyone is considering a move abroad, I strongly suggest not only weighing the financial factors, but also the cultural and self-enriching ones.
Strange.
In my experience as a German, everyone instantly switches to English if just one non-German speaker is in the group.
I suspect it's largely a generational/regional thing. My wife has lots of family from various rural parts of Eastern Germany, and half of the people over 50 speak effectively no English.
It’s definitely generational and regional. It’d be hard to find a young educated German in Berlin who doesn’t speak English well.
They probably learned Russian in school in the former communist part of Germany.
Do they know Russian? They had no reason to learn English if they’re over 50 and lived in East Germany, for obvious reasons. Someone that is 50 now would’ve graduated high school in 1993, only a few years after German reunification.
"problems is [..] with Germans requiring to use their hard language [..] nobody bothers to learn German anymore, (some small percent still learn, ok) everyone who I know rather works in different country because of this"
I assure you, as a matter of fact, (A) the size of your social circle is very limited, and (B) such an attitude as yours could safely be labeled as cultural ignorance bordering on cultural arrogance.
Can't confirm this. I'm a native German working for a company in Munich and as soon anybody joins to the meeting that is not German we switch to English. 90% of meetings are in English.
When my Russian colleague asks me to speak German because he wants to practice then I speak some German with him. Otherwise all our conversations are in English.
The experience might be different in "older" companies.
In every country there will be some expat bubble which can get away with not learning the local language(s). Sometimes that bubble will be bigger and sometimes smaller, but it definitely exists in Germany too (mostly in Berlin).
That said, I simply don't understand the mindset of people who move somewhere for an extended period of time and don't bother to learn the language. It locks you out of a lot of opportunities and makes you dependent on other people (especially for official/administrative/legal purposes). It also simply doesn't work in many places - (younger) Germans may speak decent English, but try going to Spain, Italy, or even Japan and see how far you get if you insist on speaking only English.
It depends.
I live in Zürich and I get by just fine unable to speak German. I can read it just fine because it is similar enough to Swedish, my native language. I doubt I will ever learn Swiss deutsch, it really is a language on its own - with very strong dialects.
But today there are amazing translator apps that can make it so much easier parsing official documents.
Care to share an example or two?
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 :-)
In fact, with added spaces, works fine in English too (since English is also a Germanic language):
the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button.
And extended:
the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button's colour factory's entry gate.
EDIT: Let's not forget to mention its Java implementation, which goes full German:
DonauSteamshipCruiseOrganizationCaptainButtonsColorFactory
The German is only worse because we want to treat it worse, the sentence isn't much longer and they're broadly equal in conceptual cost.
Which isn't surprising since Anglo Saxon is at the heart of the non French bits of English.
Exactly. It’s not like you can even hear the absence of spaces in one or the other. It’s purely a writing choice.
And I think the use of spaces between pieces of nouns in English has more to do with the fact that -- in comparison to German -- the pronounciation is so unpredictable from the spelling that not having the visual indicator between pieces could leave you completely lost -- "what word is this?" Whereas German has very regular and consistent rules of pronounciation that map closely to spellings, so once habituated you can scan it from the page and spit it out more reliably.
Still, having grown up with English as my first language and (partially) learned German as a young man, learning German gave me more appreciation for English. Which only grew once I studied a bit of Anglo-Saxon. I love our language, there's just something about its character.
A spelling reform would be nice (though entirely impractical) though.
If you enjoy English and German but want something with a more modern twist, might I suggest Dutch? I started learning it about 3 years ago and it's very regular in terms of spelling/pronunciation. Once you learn the irregular verbs (the most common ones, like in any language it seems...), many things will just "make sense", especially if you already know English and German!
Awesome example.
Germans are allowed to write compound nouns in hyphens
Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschafts-Kapitänsmützenknopf-Farbenfabrik-Eingangstor
It’s not considered prescriptively correct, but often nowadays people just write them with spaces (like in English), especially on phones, because hitting spacebar makes spellcheck/autocorrect kick in.
I believe some dashes would make that even more correct English.
Normally whatever is acting as an adjective ie "donut-eating relative" but with such a long example it seems a bit trickier.
I don't remember many events from 1996 but my German boss walking into the office excited about the spelling reform of "Schiffahrt" certainly stood out as a memorable event.
(They added the third f or maybe re-added it)
Context, maybe just for others: Schiff is ship and Fahrt is ride, so eine Schifffahrt is a cruise (and without the article, it is also the term for seafaring in general). Anyway, you can see that Schiff ends with two Fs and Fahrt starts with one, so if you put them together to form a compound word, you get three Fs in a row, Schifffahrt. In pre-reform German spelling, this was deemed excessive, so one would write Schiffahrt, instead. The German spelling reform in the mid-90s changed this, so now you do the logical thing. (Whether the old way really was confusing and which way is more aesthetic are separate questions.)
Yeah, there has been a changeset in spelling rules
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_der_deutschen_Rechtschr...
... several times: 1996,2004,2006,2011,2017.
The current correct spelling is either Schiff-Fahrt or Schifffahrt.
Impartial foreigner here who has no stake in the old or new spelling. If you're combining ship and port, you can't just write shiport. Of course it's shiff-fahrt / shifffahrt? By what logic does anyone argue anything else?
Swedish works the same (unsurprisingly), but note that programming languages also kind of do that. If you had to use a word like that in Java you would just mash all the words together in CamelCase and it would be pretty much the same as using the long German word (and almost exactly as difficult to read) even if technically it moved from being a single word to being a long list of words. It can still be a single identifier without spaces even if you translate to a language where it can not be a single word.
This is not an accurate or precise example. You surely know you are misleading people.
German does not simply just concatenate words ad infinitum across logical classification, a concatenated, compound word is generally logically limited by classification. The concatenation generally only tends to be used in relevant (operative word being “relevant”), increasing smaller/lower logical classification. You generally will not rise and fall in that classification, let alone jump horizontally as you concatenate. It is really just a logic tree, you don’t all the sudden jump trunks or branches. It has to be a logically precise unit.
You’re essentially just saying ManBearPig. It’s not an actual thing.
So the entry gate of the factory that produces paint that happens to maybe also be used on the button of the cap of the captain of the ship on the Danube and is also part of a union, is not…
Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze nknopffarbenfabrikeingangstor
German is a prime candidate to implement PascalCase in a natural language.
This is not necessary. Practiced German speakers generally do not struggle with splitting words into their components because syllables follow relatively predictable patterns. You will run into ambiguities from time to time, of course, but the same applies to tons of other features of natural languages as well. (Do you want to outlaw homophones in English?)
Anyway, there is also a perfectly acceptable and established way of making German words easier to parse if need be: hyphens. So Hyphen-Case instead of PascalCase.
When I was learning to read German, for the longest time I thought the word “letztendlich” was “letz-tendlich” (which is meaningless but at least theoretically pronounceable) rather than “letzt-endlich” (which is what it actually is).
I’m sure a native German speaker wouldn’t make the same mistake, though.
The century old tradition has set up a couple rakes for native speakers to step into.
"Selbständig" (freelancing) is obviously derived like self-standing, but "selb" is archaic and completely unused, prompting native learners to write 'selbstständig, which is wrong.
Couple more ones like this. Ask a native speaker about hinüber vs herüber, they will be perplexed, because it feels so dialectal. And nobody even knows about imperfect tense vs perfect tense, it's just stylistics to most.
> prompting native learners to write 'selbstständig, which is wrong.
Not anymore:
Interesting insight, thanks! Linguistics is fascinating, especially in the wider cognitive science context.
I mean is this really one word though, or a bunch of words just spelled with no spacing?
It really is one "new" word consisting of a bunch of words spelled without spaces. It is a compound, where every word adds additinal information to the last component. An easier example is sth like "Altbauwohnung" which would be an apartment (Wohnung) in an old (alt) building (Bau) where "Altbau" is also a compound. This way of compunding enables you to build new words everyone can understand the first time they encounter them, but also to build those stupidly long words.
What if I said in English, you can "compound" words with adjectives so for example if you have a book, you can add red and say redbook, and you can keep going and do stuff like uselessoldreddirtyneverusedbook. You can even add possessives which have their own adjectives, like if the book was owned by a redbearded german army vet you'd say
The redbeardedgermanarmyvet'suselessoldreddirtyneverusedbook
It’s one word, like watchmaker or bookkeeper are in English.
What is your definition of “word”? This is not at all a simple question in linguistics. By the way, it can’t just be “written without spaces”, as languages with no writing system at all, and languages whose writing system has no spaces (like Chinese), still have various concepts of “word”.
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.
An example from my work: in Norwegian criminal law, the prosecutor can in some cases hand out what is called a «påtaleunnlatelse», which means something like «decision to not prosecute». This is a legal punishment in the sense that it goes on your criminal record, but no punishment beyond that is handed out. Basically, the prosecutor’s office can note down «we are convinced we can prove this was done, but have decided not to prosecute».
A special kind of this is the «prosessøkonomisk (process economical) påtaleunnlatelse» where in a large and complex case with many serious offences, some less serious can be non-prosecuted in this way to not spend eternity in the courtroom.
In Australian English, this is known as "Section 10".
In English English it’s a ‘caution’.
So these are kind of fun to compare. At the high level they clearly all have the same purpose: in some cases it's socially useful to have the punishment for a crime simply be a statement of "person X did this thing". But the details vary a bit:
- It seems the Australian section 10 is handed out by the court, where the English and Norwegian options dispense with a trial entirely. It also looks like a Section 10 doesn't go in a person's criminal record, unlike the other two.
- It looks like the English caution requires an admission of guilt, while the Norwegian option is at the prosecutor's discretion within the rules of applicability of the procedure. Of course someone not demanding a trial when given this can be seen as an _implicit_ admission of guilt, but the legal nuance can probably be important.
- The English and Norwegian procedures are nominally also different in who makes the decision: the English procedure is handled by the police, while in Norway it's the prosecutor's office. But this is more a theoretical than practical difference I think, because the Norwegian prosecutor's office is organized differently than the English Crown Prosecution Service: here, the lowest levels of prosecutors are integrated into the police services they work with, so in practice I think it works out much the same.
In law of England and Wales we also have recording of non-crimes, which aren't cautions (it goes back to combating institutional racism).
Another example, not involving compound nouns: Norwegian criminal process distinguishes two levels of suspicion. The first level «mistenkt» (suspect) is basically the investigation noting down in their log «we think this guy might have done it», but the second level «siktet» (literally aimed at, no idea how to translate to English or even if an equivalent term exists) is a formal decision made by the prosecutor’s office. And importantly, the use of «tvangsmidler» (coercive instruments, like arrest, search, seizure and so on) requires there to be a siktelse and this status also triggers legal rights for the accused like the right to a defence attorney.
There are similar distinctions in American law, e.g. with the police's right to tarry you. A short stop by the police can be conducted for 'reasonable articulable suspicion' of committing a crime, such as seeing you make a rash judgment in driving, while a longer stop or an arrest requires 'probable cause' such as smelling marijuana in your car after the initial stop.
You mean 'Terry' which is not a verb. The name comes from a Supreme Court case I am too lazy to look up. Correct usage is, "the police conducted a Terry stop and frisked the subject for weapons for their own protection."
The issue is not so much one of language but of habit and usage. That's why in that sense it is important for scientific and technical domains to be taught and practiced in your own language. This allows terms to evolve and be used habitually in the language.
The exact same issue exists with translating English to German - long German words suddenly dont fit. And with translating English into Polish too.
I was once involved in building the UI for a video game. There was some kind of labels for baseic color selection ... "czerwony" instead of "red" broke everything :F
yes, this can cause even major-ish UI issues - like in android where this happens:
cut,copy,paste auschneiden,kopieren,einfügen
this can break the UI so you have scroll on a popup just to copy a piece of text because google put "copy" last in the selection.