Care to share an example or two?
The Donau is a river. On this river is a steamship (Dampfshiff): Donaudampfschiff
This ship is part of an organisation (Gesellschaft) that manages cruises (Fahrt): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft
The ship has a captain (Kapitän) who has a cap (Mütze): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze
On this cap is a button (Knopf): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopf
You could extend this example: The button is colored with a special paint (Farbe), which is produced in a factory (Fabrik): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopffarbenfabrik
And the factory has an entry gate (Eingangstor): Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenknopffarbenfabrikeingangstor
In English, this would be a huge sentence, all in reverse order: The entry gate of the factory that produces the color for the button on the captain's cap of the ship belonging to the cruise organization on the Donau.
The German is a lot more compact, if sometimes hard to parse :-)
But it also odd example for this, because it is long as hell anyway already and additional spacing that English equivalent would require is just opportunity to wrap. It is just harder to read, but English equivalent would be easier to layout.
Is it in the dictionary?
The redbeardedgermanarmyvet'suselessoldreddirtyneverusedbook
the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button.
And extended:
the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button's colour factory's entry gate.
EDIT: Let's not forget to mention its Java implementation, which goes full German:
DonauSteamshipCruiseOrganizationCaptainButtonsColorFactory
Which isn't surprising since Anglo Saxon is at the heart of the non French bits of English.
avagoodweekend and dontforgetaboutheaeroguard
Still, having grown up with English as my first language and (partially) learned German as a young man, learning German gave me more appreciation for English. Which only grew once I studied a bit of Anglo-Saxon. I love our language, there's just something about its character.
A spelling reform would be nice (though entirely impractical) though.
Germans are allowed to write compound nouns in hyphens
Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschafts-Kapitänsmützenknopf-Farbenfabrik-Eingangstor
Normally whatever is acting as an adjective ie "donut-eating relative" but with such a long example it seems a bit trickier.
Anyway, there is also a perfectly acceptable and established way of making German words easier to parse if need be: hyphens. So Hyphen-Case instead of PascalCase.
I’m sure a native German speaker wouldn’t make the same mistake, though.
"Selbständig" (freelancing) is obviously derived like self-standing, but "selb" is archaic and completely unused, prompting native learners to write 'selbstständig, which is wrong.
Couple more ones like this. Ask a native speaker about hinüber vs herüber, they will be perplexed, because it feels so dialectal. And nobody even knows about imperfect tense vs perfect tense, it's just stylistics to most.
Not anymore:
(They added the third f or maybe re-added it)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_der_deutschen_Rechtschr...
... several times: 1996,2004,2006,2011,2017.
The current correct spelling is either Schiff-Fahrt or Schifffahrt.
Also, there are portmanteau words where the middle letters overlap, e.g. bro+romance=bromance.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/chaffinch
There may be others.
When we turn to the letter 'l', we have the word skill-less which is not always written with a hyphen, in which case the three l's remain intact.
Once upon a time we used to write by hand. It was considered time consuming.
Once upon a time we used to set books in lead letters. There were ligatures, where two consecutive letters hat a special spacing - like "fi" or "sz". If we allowed three consecutive letters, we would need to invent new ligatures.
It is probably easier/cheaper to just forbid the spelling.
German does not simply just concatenate words ad infinitum across logical classification, a concatenated, compound word is generally logically limited by classification. The concatenation generally only tends to be used in relevant (operative word being “relevant”), increasing smaller/lower logical classification. You generally will not rise and fall in that classification, let alone jump horizontally as you concatenate. It is really just a logic tree, you don’t all the sudden jump trunks or branches. It has to be a logically precise unit.
You’re essentially just saying ManBearPig. It’s not an actual thing.
So the entry gate of the factory that produces paint that happens to maybe also be used on the button of the cap of the captain of the ship on the Danube and is also part of a union, is not…
Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmütze nknopffarbenfabrikeingangstor
A special kind of this is the «prosessøkonomisk (process economical) påtaleunnlatelse» where in a large and complex case with many serious offences, some less serious can be non-prosecuted in this way to not spend eternity in the courtroom.
- It seems the Australian section 10 is handed out by the court, where the English and Norwegian options dispense with a trial entirely. It also looks like a Section 10 doesn't go in a person's criminal record, unlike the other two.
- It looks like the English caution requires an admission of guilt, while the Norwegian option is at the prosecutor's discretion within the rules of applicability of the procedure. Of course someone not demanding a trial when given this can be seen as an _implicit_ admission of guilt, but the legal nuance can probably be important.
- The English and Norwegian procedures are nominally also different in who makes the decision: the English procedure is handled by the police, while in Norway it's the prosecutor's office. But this is more a theoretical than practical difference I think, because the Norwegian prosecutor's office is organized differently than the English Crown Prosecution Service: here, the lowest levels of prosecutors are integrated into the police services they work with, so in practice I think it works out much the same.