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Comment by kara_jade | Hacker News Reader

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kara_jade·

The super-complicated LIFO example is, unfortunately, a contrived example:

“Ich stimme dem Maler, der die Meinung, dass Rot keine Farbe ist, vertritt, zu.”

This sentence can be rewritten in German just as in the English translation:

“Ich stimme dem Maler zu, der die Meinung vertritt, dass Rot keine Farbe ist.”

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Besides, it should be "keine Farbe sei"

“Ich stimme dem Maler zu, der meint, Rot sei keine Farbe.”

Danke!

I think the rewrite of the sentence is the way better way to phase it. Just because something is legal German, like in the original example, it doesn't mean it is good German :). (German native speaker).

You're right and in some sentences, the entire meaning of the sentence only makes sense when you read the last word. Thus, a style guide for writing recommends to restructure the sentence as much as possible.

Unfortunately, especially in academic writing, some people want to appear smart and make their sentences super complicated on purpose. Fortunately, I'm not a student anymore and I stopped reading bullshit where the author doesn't respect the reader.

I think you can easily construct other examples, e.g. "Ich trete meine Rechte, die ich, Gott sei Dank, habe, ab."

As a german speaker this strikes me as wrong. I personally would have written that as "Ich trete meine Rechte, die ich Gott sei Dank habe, ab", or simplified as "Ich trete meine Rechte ab, die ich Gott sei Dank habe"

It doesn't strike me as wrong, just as a bit unhandy. The explanatory Nebensatz that is started with a relative pronoun that refers to the object that is about to be explained can always start directly after the object, and sometimes even must start there. For example:

Seine Meinung, die ich nicht teile, macht weniger Sinn als ihre.

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