• themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I mean, yeah. This is an important part of the German language. They create composite words to describe a thing, and learning to break it down into its constituents is a fundamental part of reading German.

    Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug

    Hilfe - help
    leistung - performance
    Hilfeleistung - assistance
    lösch - delete, extinguish
    gruppen - group (team, department)
    löschgruppen - (fire) extinguishing team or department
    fahr - drive
    zeug - thing
    fahrzeug - vehicle

    Assistance Extinguishing Team Vehicle

    Now translate

    Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s also one of the most difficult parts of learning German as an adult, despite being a relatively simple syntactic rule and something we kinda-sorta emulate in English. The other part, at least for me, were false friends. Also sorry to all the lurking Germans waiting to comment, I forgot all of my German the moment I graduated college.