5 ms·

I still don't get the tech industries fascination with random german words at least here it's sort of fitting.

meibo 3y ago
Looks like this was made by a team in Zürich, which is mostly German, so I imagine it came to them fairly naturally, and who doesn't want to pick cool names for hackathon projects.
- evmar 3y ago
  It was kind of an internal joke at Google for German-speaking teams to make German-named projects. (It's maybe only a joke that makes sense to the infamous German sense of humor.)
  - unlikelymordant 3y ago
    The german sense of humour is no laughing matter!
  - munificent 3y ago
    Q: How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One. They are very efficient and don't have much sense of humor.
aardvarkr 3y ago
Citation needed ^ Maybe there are just some great German devs and you’re using a lot of their software?
- mflendrich 3y ago
  Google's Zurich office has had a tradition of creating codenames in German (regardless of the backgrounds of any engineers involved). Source: I worked on Sensenmann.
  - ASinclair 3y ago
    I’ve always appreciated Zapfhahn considering TAP is another widely used system.
geodel 3y ago
Maybe because German have words for the things, feelings which other languages only have sentences for it.
- eru 3y ago
  Turkish and Finnish have whole sentences that fit in single words. German is rather short-worded by comparison. The main difference between German and English here is one of spelling: Germans like to write their compounds together, English speakers like to put spaces in between. Writing compounds together like that wasn't always the norm in German spelling, either. Especially before the printing press rules were more fluid. English would still be the same language, if you wrote supremecourt or summerolympics without a space. German would still be the same language, if you wrote Bahn Hof or Sommer Nachts Traum. (And of course both languages also have hyphens.)
  - tauchunfall 3y ago
    >German would still be the same language, if you wrote Bahn Hof or Sommer Nachts Traum. You would probably write "Sommer Nacht Traum" instead. The fugen-S of "Nachtstraum" only makes sense, when you connect "Nacht" and "Traum". (English has no fugen-S, as far as I'm aware)
    - eru 3y ago
      Thanks for bringing this up. I am purely talking about changing the spelling. The Fugen-S is something you actually pronounce, so if you want to keep the language intact and spelling phonetical, you would keep the Fugen-s. Yes, it might be a bit weird to you. But it's no weirder than other changes we make to words in German because of grammar. Like 'kleiner Hund' vs 'kleine Katze'. Adding an 's' on the previous word is no worse than adding an 'r'.
      - tauchunfall 3y ago
        It's actually not always clear. There are "Einkommensteuer" und "Einkommenssteuer" and you could write and pronounce them either way. Same for "Bahnhofstraße" and "Bahnhofsstraße". But yeah, I guess these are some rules that developed around the practice of writing words together. It's also interesting when you split up the words. For instance "gebrandmarkt" results in "brand gemarkt". So you extract the "brand" from "ge-...markt".

Looks like this was made by a team in Zürich, which is mostly German, so I imagine it came to them fairly naturally, and who doesn't want to pick cool names for hackathon projects.

evmar 3y ago
It was kind of an internal joke at Google for German-speaking teams to make German-named projects. (It's maybe only a joke that makes sense to the infamous German sense of humor.)
- unlikelymordant 3y ago
  The german sense of humour is no laughing matter!
- munificent 3y ago
  Q: How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One. They are very efficient and don't have much sense of humor.

aardvarkr 3y ago

Citation needed ^ Maybe there are just some great German devs and you’re using a lot of their software?

mflendrich 3y ago
Google's Zurich office has had a tradition of creating codenames in German (regardless of the backgrounds of any engineers involved). Source: I worked on Sensenmann.
- ASinclair 3y ago
  I’ve always appreciated Zapfhahn considering TAP is another widely used system.

geodel 3y ago

Maybe because German have words for the things, feelings which other languages only have sentences for it.

eru 3y ago
Turkish and Finnish have whole sentences that fit in single words. German is rather short-worded by comparison. The main difference between German and English here is one of spelling: Germans like to write their compounds together, English speakers like to put spaces in between. Writing compounds together like that wasn't always the norm in German spelling, either. Especially before the printing press rules were more fluid. English would still be the same language, if you wrote supremecourt or summerolympics without a space. German would still be the same language, if you wrote Bahn Hof or Sommer Nachts Traum. (And of course both languages also have hyphens.)
- tauchunfall 3y ago
  >German would still be the same language, if you wrote Bahn Hof or Sommer Nachts Traum. You would probably write "Sommer Nacht Traum" instead. The fugen-S of "Nachtstraum" only makes sense, when you connect "Nacht" and "Traum". (English has no fugen-S, as far as I'm aware)
  - eru 3y ago
    Thanks for bringing this up. I am purely talking about changing the spelling. The Fugen-S is something you actually pronounce, so if you want to keep the language intact and spelling phonetical, you would keep the Fugen-s. Yes, it might be a bit weird to you. But it's no weirder than other changes we make to words in German because of grammar. Like 'kleiner Hund' vs 'kleine Katze'. Adding an 's' on the previous word is no worse than adding an 'r'.
    - tauchunfall 3y ago
      It's actually not always clear. There are "Einkommensteuer" und "Einkommenssteuer" and you could write and pronounce them either way. Same for "Bahnhofstraße" and "Bahnhofsstraße". But yeah, I guess these are some rules that developed around the practice of writing words together. It's also interesting when you split up the words. For instance "gebrandmarkt" results in "brand gemarkt". So you extract the "brand" from "ge-...markt".