Learning a new language is easy!

Alles gut. Deine Vergesslichkeit hindert mich nicht daran, hier zu pfostieren.

As a German I can assure you that false friends are something you scare away all pupils (regardless of age). I have very intense memories of our English teacher correcting us again and again.

Regarding the composita in German: we are moving more towards the English approach by splitting these word monstrousities with hyphens. E.g. Donaudampfschifffahrtsamt may be spelled Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Amt. Its way easier to read and write. While the hyphenated spelling is not something that is used often officially, it got more popular in the last decades.

My biggest issue with Duolingo trying to learn German honestly. Sure I can read a compound word when presented with it, but fucking Duo is like "Cool... now spell it... bitch"

Oh I thought those were false cognates

Tja

In English, I like to think it would be a "thingie." Like Germans are constantly trying to remember the word "lighter" and they're like, "you know, the whatsit, the... fire... thingie."

When you're a fireman whose job is to plan which vehicles go where or when you need to precisely specify which type of fire vehicle. Non-firemen usually say Feuerwehrfahrzeug or even Feuerwehrauto.

No idea, I don't speak German. I just studied it a bit and barely remember a few basic phrases.

Die post ist pissenwasser!

my lack of fucks about der, die, das, dem etc made it very obvious I wasn't a native speaker.

I employ many non native speakers and most of them struggle with their articles and are very self conscious about them. They often consider themselves bad speakers because of this and I fear they sometimes talk less because they don't have the courage to make grammar mistakes.

I always tell them that I don't give a fuck about articles. Most of the time they don't convey any meaning. You can skip them or use a generic "de" to fake any article. For me as an employer it's more important that you practice talking, get a good vocabulary and have your times (especially Präsens, Perfekt, Futur) straight.🤷

English is the weird one of the Indo European languages in dropping grammatical gender. Or if you look at it from Persians perspective, we don't go far enough because we still have gendered pronouns.

English spelling is easy!

Just learn which word comes from which language.

Kindergarden. German, you spell the i like in German.

fable. French, you don't spell every letter

Island. French

pace. Latin, you just spell it like you read it.

English has the problem that it just took words from many other languages and kept their pronunciation.

Which leads to a whole mess of words. Older words seem to have a bit more consistency.

when you know a little German it's much less confusing than it seems

speaking German is easy. Just know German!

That's going to be in my head for a while. Bastard.

I don't know about German, but in Swedish it looks really messy if you sunder your compound words. In general I think people know what you mean regardless, but you can end up with peculiar double meanings. There are plenty of signs, notes, and what have you that people have posted online for a laugh.

Off the top of my head

• Gå lättpackad i fjällen
  • Travel lightly (as in luggage) in the mountains
• Gå lätt packad i fjällen
  • Travel slightly intoxicated in the mountains
• Sjukgymnast
  • Physiotherapist
• Sjuk gymnast
  • Diseased/Sick gymnast
  • Addendum. Sjuk could also be used as an emphasizer just like in English. Think "bro that's a sick outfit" kind of thing, so it could be read as "awesome gymnast"
• Årets sista svenskodlade tulpaner
  • The last Swedish-grown tulips of the year
• Årets sista svensk odlade tulpaner
  • The last Swede of the year cultivated tulips

It's also worth noting that the tones can be different, so if you "hear" the words as you read them, then "lättpackad" and "lätt packad" sounds different.

We tend to limit it to two words most of the time, and most compound words in English are Germanic in origin.

How does that story portray dark skin as worse than light? What am I missing? Just sounds like the dude showed the kids that even if you change the skin color, you're still the same person.

Or do you mean because the white kids are bullying the black one and not vice-versa? Cause yeah.. that might not be perfect nowadays, but it's still just trying to teach the kids not to bully the immigrants just because they're different. Guess they could've gone for something more neutral like some animals or something, but c'mon..

I had to look it up, it's the technical term for a certain firefighting vehicle.

In particular, what distinguishes it from a normal crew firefighting vehicle (Löschgruppenfahrzeug) is its equipment for "Technische Hilfeleistung" (technical help-providing) which basically means it carries equipment beyond basic extinguishing agents. If you're physically stuck in your car after a crash, a Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug has to arrive to cut open the doors.

A Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug

A (small) Löschgruppenfahrzeug. Note that it only contains firefighting equipment.

No, that's actually the official term for a very specific type of vehicle. It's a hybrid between a Löschgruppenfahrzeug (a multipurpose firefighting vehicle) and a Rüstwagen (which carries equipment for light non-firefighting purposes).

People who actually deal with them just say "HLF".

Any reason you didn't stay in Germany?

Probably a "supporting firefighter group vehicle“ to be exact.

Edit: this word is kind of bizarre, because it is a composition of 3 compound words which each are compound words themselves.

Hilfe-leistung (Help Giving = Support) Lösch-Gruppe (Extinguishing Group = Firefighters) Fahr-zeug (Drive Thing = Vehicle)

"Gumball" is the only correct spelling; "gum ball" is incorrect. So the gum and ball are at least connected. But you're right about "red gumball machine." The gumballs or machine might be what's red.

Hilfe (help or assistance)

Leistung (act, performance or service)

Lösch (delete, remove, extinguish)

Fahrzeug (vehicle)

Hilfeleistungloschgruppenfahrze, or Extinguishment help service vehicle

Yes that’s a good example too! (I don’t know of any language where that’s a possibility but I agree it’s similar)

The spaces are used for a reason

That’s the thing though - my hypothesis is that it’s based on what one is familiar with. There are languages/scripts where spaces don’t indicate word boundaries (e.g. Chinese), or that are rather agglutinative (e.g. Finnish), or somewhere in between (like German), or on the opposite end of the spectrum you have Hindi/Devanagari where a space and an overline marks a word. Totally understandable that it feels perhaps rot13-ish due to unfamiliarity but I would be surprised if native users of those languages share that sentiment.

Keep in mind that the memes you see are extreme examples. The vast majority of compound words consists of 2 or 3 words. Like Ofenreiniger (oven cleaner) or Werkzeugkoffer (tool box). Werkzeug being a compound word itself, made from "Werk" & "Zeug" meaning craft or work & gadget. These extremely long words tend to describe very specific, often niche items and are just rarely used in common language. Most people would call the thing in the picture more generalised "Feuerwehrauto". Sufficient to describe it for most people, but not as precise as the long compound. It is basically a question how much details you want or need to communicate.

I've played around with changing Windows system languages before and was indeed thrown off by the slew of Gruppenrichtlinienbearbeitungsprogramm-type calques. Glad to know that Germans also find this offputting ;)

Löschen can also mean to offload cargo from a ship...

I did not know this one either, and it seems even more different from delete/erase/extinguish. I had to look this up; wiktionary says that the unloading sense is actually from a different root (MND lössen, cognate with "los"), which may have changed due to association with the "erasure" sense, particularly in the context of erasure from ship inventories and logbooks.

Also, thank you for the context. This kind of detail tends to be extremely difficult to search for.

I don't think that's how it works. Most compound words are nouns not verbs.

Also ass is "Arsch" not "Arse". You could say Arschlöscher, but if I heard this without context I would think of something that deletes asses.

If I would need to construct a noun that describes a bum bum that extinguishes fires I would say it should be "Löscharsch" maybe even "Feuerlöscharsch".

These are real words in the sense that German speaker should immediately understand them but you will not find them in a dictionary. That's what makes German different from many languages. We can make up understandable compound words on the fly.

It's no coincidence that two of the words I recognized are cognates in English. "Fahr" I knew because I was always amused by the phrase "Gute Fahrt!"

Ahhhh I was kinda wondering why there was an educational advent calendar 😅

For the longest time I believed Germany had no comedians, then someone told me that Mystery of the Druids was meant to be satire of English Police.

Then I was like "Okay that explains a lot."