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[–] 16 points 2 years ago (8 children)

This is today's version of "Eskimos (Inuit, I know, but that's not how the memes went) have __40 __65 250( insert your number, it won't be wrong) words for snow. This is for the same reason and is now largely known as wrong.

The problem is even German people (I live in Germany) also believe that they have a larger more expressive language than (for example) English... When it isn't true. German has either 5.3 million++ words or 135,000 depending on how you count them. In reality you can endlessly combine words in German together, but it very rarely makes it a "new word".

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Turtle = shield toad!

    Gloves = hand shoes!

    Raccoon = wash bear!

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  • [+] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Antibabypille - contraception

    Stinktier (stinky animal) - skunk

    Stinkfrucht (smelly fruit) - durian

    Krankenhaus (sick house) - hospital

    Krankenwagen (sick wagon) - ambulance

    Krankenschwester (sick sister) - nurse

    Handschuhe (hand shoe) - glove

    Durchfall (through fall) - diarrhoea

    Regenschirm (rain shield) - Umbrella

    Stachelschwein (‘spikey pig’)= Porcupine

    ‘Pustblume’ (blow flower) = dandelion seed head

    Sauerstoff (sour stuff) - oxygen

    Wasserstoff (water stuff) - hydrogen

    Totenkopf (dead head)💀 - scull

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    This is also largely responsible for why more English words have a Romance root than a Germanic one. English's Germanic words tend to be counted as their base and get combined as phrases, while its Romance words are more likely to get double counted in compound words or variants of different forms being counted as separate words.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    If you compare german non-compund words with their english translation the german words tend to do be a bit longer on average. I think the same also goes for the word-count in german sentences

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