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 - vehicleAssistance Extinguishing Team Vehicle
Now translate
Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
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.
My biggest issue with Duolingo trying to learn German honestly. Sure I can read a compound word when presented with it, but fucking Duo is like “Cool… now spell it… bitch”
Oh I thought those were false cognates
Hanz! Get ze Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug!
As someone who learnt both German and English as a second language, german was far easier to learn. Atleast the spelling and stuff makes sense.
IMHO English is easier to learn in the beginning, but gets ridiculous later on. Pronunciation is completely random and makes no sense, vocabulary as well. German pronunciation is probably harder (maybe? The English “th” is a challenge as well!), and articles are stupid. But: once you have a certain level it gets way easier. Pronunciation makes sense, vocabs make sense.
For example, what’s a “plane” supposed to be? Flugzeug (“flying thing”) makes much more sense, even if it’s the first time you read it.
Gesundheit.
Danke
My personal favorite is when Pieter cuts off a little girl’s hand:
The words are less impressively compound, but the images speak for themselves. This one is good too:
Great children’s literature!
Peter was the guy with the nasty hair and nails. The kid in orange is Konrad or little suck-a-thumb. His thumbs are cut of by the a random man with big sharp scissors because he wouldn’t stop sucking his thumbs. So he kind of had it coming. He was even warned by his mother.
But seriously the girl on the bottom is maybe the only good story I would actually tell my children. It’s about a girl who kept playing with fire even tho she was repeatedly told how dangerous it was.
There is also one story about a black kid that is being bullied for the colour his skin. A bystander doesn’t like that and dips the dipshits in ink so their skin is even darker than that of the black child. Wich is kind of slay but still portrays dark skin as worse than lighter skin soo :(
How does that story portray dark skin as worse than light? What am I missing? Just sounds like the dude showed the kids that even if you change the skin color, you’re still the same person.
Or do you mean because the white kids are bullying the black one and not vice-versa? Cause yeah… that might not be perfect nowadays, but it’s still just trying to teach the kids not to bully the immigrants just because they’re different. Guess they could’ve gone for something more neutral like some animals or something, but c’mon…
The comments the guy makes sound more like “yes having black skin is bad, but there is nothing he can change about it, so don’t bully him.” And when he dips the kids in ink he say “look at you. Your skin is even darker than his now!”.
How a normal Mexican American misunderstands via conversations with actual Germans…say you got an avocado… Now add salt, its a saltiavocado. Add vinegar, its a saltyvinegaravocado. Now step on it while running and you just “slippedonavinegaravocado” or you had an “avocadoslip”.
I call bullshit. Bullshit doesn’t come.
English has large compounds like this too, we just usually add spaces and/or hyphens so it doesn’t look quite as extreme when written out.
Google translate says “the rescue firefighting group vehicle”
Come on, I know there’s Germans about. What the hell does it say lol? Here’s what Claude says:
The fire department’s rescue and firefighting group vehicle… It transports firefighters, ladders, tools, hoses… (text cuts off)
So I am guessing “Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug” is “rescue and firefighting group vehicle?”
American here who studied German for eight years, graduated with a minor in German, and lived there for one year:
I’m not sure how to properly translate this children’s book.
The long word breaks into easily-understood pieces:
“help-ability-extinguish-group-travel-thing”
But in order to get a proper concept back out of it you need to know what order the pieces go together in and I don’t know that.
travel-thing is a vehicle.
help-ability is emergency services
Beyond that I have to guess — Is group-travel-thing a crew vehicle, making this a crew vehicle for extinguishing?
Or maybe extinguish-group is a fire crew and this is a vehicle for fire crews?
Either way I feel like the author is using a lot more word-parts than they should have to for what is (clearly in the picture) better described as a pump truck.
No, that’s actually the official term for a very specific type of vehicle. It’s a hybrid between a Löschgruppenfahrzeug (a multipurpose firefighting vehicle) and a Rüstwagen (which carries equipment for light non-firefighting purposes).
People who actually deal with them just say “HLF”.
Yes, these compount words might be the reason why we couldn’t get rid of the damn Nazis for good: After the Second World War, we Germans ourselves probably didn’t understand what the purpose of the “Entnazifizierungsbehörde” (authority to combat National Socialist ideology) was and, accordingly, could not really grasp why it was so important. A serious mistake that still has consequences to this day, unfortunately…
/s, obviously
LOL looks like a German advent calendar, not even a book!
Fake news!
It’s one of those books that lets you flap it open to reveal the Feuerwehrleute, Leitern, Werkzeuge and Schläuche within.
Ahhhh I was kinda wondering why there was an educational advent calendar 😅
