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Comment by nicbou | Hacker News Reader

German has many of those moments. It's a brilliant language for very specific uses, like user manuals.

Usually German is just longer than a lot of other languages, more verbose.

Do you have any examples where it really excels? In my experience English is quite a good language to describe complicated things rather simple and short.

There is a mood useful especially in certain types of fiction for which German is a perfect fit. Because the most important verb in a sentence tend to be at the very end in German, it naturally creates a sense of suspense.

to dare → herausfordern

    Eng: "I dare you to drink that"  
    Deu: "Ich fordere dich heraus, das zu trinken."

Almost double

Trink's, wenn du dich traust! (Drink it if you dare.)

"Trink's doch!" has pretty much the same meaning, in the correct context. "Just drink it [... if you dare]"

Not fair getting “doch” involved, that’s like saying “dude”: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d7sf2O90eu4

Just because all the other languages are inferior for the lack of a "doch" equivalent... ;)

That's the verbal equivalent of the Indian head-tilt, right?

Schon, aber doch mit anderer Bedeutung.

And we have more of those, like "schon", "gell", "fei" (in some dialects), "halt", "eben". Maybe a few more I cannot think of right now.

If you want to keep it very formal. Informally one would say something like "Trau dich, trinks!", or even shorter, "Komm, trinks!" or "Hopp, trinks!". Also depends on the exact intentions, if it were a bet, one could translate it as "Wetten dass dus nicht trinkst?", which would also state which side of the bet the speaker is on. "Herausfordern" is also more something like "challenge", as in "one knight challenging the other", less like "dare" as in "one child trying to get the other to do something".

Deu: "Ex!"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ex#German

Shortest translation that comes to my mind would be: "Ich fordre dich zum Trunk." Which IMO translates the original sentence pretty well. You could add a "heraus" at the end but as a native I would not say that it is necessary. Also the Word "Trunk" sounds a bit antiquated but Duden still lists it, therefore I'd say it's fair game.

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