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Comment by m_mueller | Hacker News Reader

I think here's where you're missing the point: The article describes how authors like to, and are able to, coin new compound words in German and readers can understand them without the need for explanation. IMO this is something that's harder to do in English. The main reason for that is not that compound nouns exist, but the ability to turn everything into a noun and then combine it with others.

Example:

green - grün - Begrünung ("planting with trees and grass") - Strassenbegrünung ("planting trees and grass along the street").

You may be able to use "greening" here, but at least AFAIK it is not common in English since it seems a bit strange to turn adjectives into nouns like that. In German I don't even think that anyone needed to explain that word - you immediately think of the older word "Bepflanzung" (planting) and notice that it's probably meant in this context. It's all about reusing known pre- and suffixes.

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> The article describes how authors like to, and are able to, coin new compound words in German and readers can understand them without the need for explanation

I guess to some extent the comparison is going to be subjective (and my German is so bad I can't really do so with confidence), but I think a big component in the discussion has to do with dialects. Were someone to say "street-greenin'" in my hometown, the phrase would be understood right away, and is entire grammatical in many American english dialect, but no in the standard dialect. Now if you walk on to a university campus and say that you are interested in neotransphilic interpersonalization most people will have little trouble getting at what you mean (though they might agree as to the specific meaning, and role there eyes at you if they study English). This is rather high brow, but these kind of fun and games with prefixes, suffixes, and a regimen of contractions are also common in 1337 and other dialects. But again, they are not part of the standard dialect.

I would be curious to see a comparison of difference in compound words across different German dialects.

I think there's a difference in what is perceived as 'standard' between the two languages. English basically gives you a very rich vocabulary that has pretty much preset terms - common, legal, official and academic - for all concepts. German basically gives you a set of rules, a set of word stems and the rest is "Usus", i.e. the way it is commonly used, which is weaker than being part of an official standard. So different regions may have different official terms for the same thing because there is no standard to tell them otherwise - consensus is only reached through interaction. I think that's similar to how it works with English in the UK though.

Now, when it comes to the initial rules, they are common to all dialects, albeit with some variations (vowel / consonant shift etc.). So the "Be" in Begrünung would be universally understood as indicating a human activity in this context, rather than a passive process.

>You may be able to use "greening" here, but at least AFAIK it is not common in English since it seems a bit strange to turn adjectives into nouns like that.

I think the equivalent in English would be "begreening." It looks weird written out, but I think your meaning would be clear if you said something like, "The city's begreening project will cost an estimated 1.5 million dollars."

> You may be able to use "greening" here

In fact, you are able to use "greening" here. A google search for "greening" returns a great number of websites and articles about "greening" in exactly the sense you describe. There is nothing strange about it.

This google search also led me to another wonderful English compound word: "greenwashing" [0]. Undoubtedly, if this were instead a German compound ("Grünwaschen" oder so), we would fawn over the inventiveness of German and lament the inability of English to produce such compounds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing

I think you mean: you're such a pointmisser

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