5 ms·

The food is French, the animal is Anglo Saxon. At least English lacks compound words or whatever German calls those 30-character constructions.

onestay42 1y ago
"Cattle labeling meat labeling supervision task transfer act" is just as bad as Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, English just gets to use spaces where German doesn't. The underlying construction is the same. (I definitively got that translation wrong)
- magarnicle 1y ago
  Usually English will try to come up with a single, Latin-or-Greek-derived word for compound ideas like this, which is another bad habit. So surgery is full of -ectomies instead of -cut-outs.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    Medicine terms in German also use Latin or Greek, since this is the subject language, so this is a bad example.
- bmacho 1y ago
  Maybe in speech they are similar, but not in writing. The underlying construction is as different as it can be. English puts " " between words, and German does not.
- arkensaw 1y ago
  English gets to use a sentence. It can be reworded any number of ways. I did a bit of quick googling and the clearest English I came up with for `Regulation (EC) No 1760/2000` is "Requirements for the Labelling of Minced Beef" which is a lot easier to process than Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. The reason we split code over lines is the same reason we split sentences into words. Easier for the brain to parse. I wonder do German brains work on a much longer context window because of the language?
  - detaro 1y ago
    a) the title of the regulation is not equivalent to the law (unsurprisingly), onestay42's translation is clunky but a lot closer b) the official title of the law was "Gesetz zur Übertragung der Aufgaben für die Überwachung der Rinderkennzeichnung und Rindfleischetikettierung", so how again is it that English "gets to use a sentence" and German doesn't? German has the choice depending on context, sometimes having one word is convenient.
    - arkensaw 1y ago
      I'm not a German speaker. Why would someone use such a long word as a convenience?
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        I am. It is a semantic difference. Single entities get referred to by a single word. If you use a word group to describe it, it means you don't consider it a single "thing", but a "system" described by the relations of single "things". The composed word also has a specific meaning that the same words with space between doesn't. For example "das rote Kraut" – "red herb" and "das Rotkraut" – "red cabbage". Also suppose "red cabbage" was grown in abnormal conditions, so it doesn't have the color pigments, it is still "red cabbage", but not "red" "cabbage". This is awkward to state in English, but no problem in German.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    > I wonder do German brains work on a much longer context window because of the language? Maybe, but more due to the spelling of numbers and long sentences. Compound words are not an example of this, since Germans can parse these words just fine as different things. It just means that the lowest "tokenization" in everyday use is not the word, but subcomponents of them. Do English native speakers "tokenize" expressions in words? Do you see it as '(labelling) (of) (minced)' or '(label)l(ing) (of) (minc)(ed)' ? I can't speak for most Germans, but the algorithm I think I use is just greedy from left to right. This is also consistent with how mistokenization in common puns works, so I think this is common. In primary school we trained to recognize syllable boundaries. Is that just a German thing, or is this common in other countries? You need to know these for spelling and once you know these, separating word components becomes trivial.
usrnm 1y ago
> At least English lacks compound words or whatever German calls those 30-character constructions. Not entirely true. English, as any other Germanic language, still likes to compound words to produce a new meaning, the main difference is that, as opposed to most other Germanic languages, spaces are usually retained in writing. But this is just a spelling difference, the underlying process is the same. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Does that mean, that "compound word" counts as a single word? And how do I distinguish between "a" "compound" "word" and "a" "compound word"?
  - usrnm 1y ago
    Depends on your definition of a word and how it relates to writing. It's not such a simple question, actually. Let's consider "scheepskapitein", "Schiffskapitän" and "ship captain". All three are formed the exact same way and mean roughly the same thing, but it's customary in Dutch and German to spell it without a space and in English it's considered correct to have a space in between. Note, that there are no spaces in speech, it's simply a writing convention. So, how many words are there in this example?
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      I don't know, I think German laymen have a unambiguous understanding. "der Schiffskapitän" = 2, "des Schiffes Kapitän" = 3 Sure, linguists can dissect everything and should, but how does the English laymen perceive it?

onestay42 1y ago

"Cattle labeling meat labeling supervision task transfer act" is just as bad as Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, English just gets to use spaces where German doesn't. The underlying construction is the same. (I definitively got that translation wrong)

magarnicle 1y ago
Usually English will try to come up with a single, Latin-or-Greek-derived word for compound ideas like this, which is another bad habit. So surgery is full of -ectomies instead of -cut-outs.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Medicine terms in German also use Latin or Greek, since this is the subject language, so this is a bad example.
bmacho 1y ago
Maybe in speech they are similar, but not in writing. The underlying construction is as different as it can be. English puts " " between words, and German does not.
arkensaw 1y ago
English gets to use a sentence. It can be reworded any number of ways. I did a bit of quick googling and the clearest English I came up with for `Regulation (EC) No 1760/2000` is "Requirements for the Labelling of Minced Beef" which is a lot easier to process than Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. The reason we split code over lines is the same reason we split sentences into words. Easier for the brain to parse. I wonder do German brains work on a much longer context window because of the language?
- detaro 1y ago
  a) the title of the regulation is not equivalent to the law (unsurprisingly), onestay42's translation is clunky but a lot closer b) the official title of the law was "Gesetz zur Übertragung der Aufgaben für die Überwachung der Rinderkennzeichnung und Rindfleischetikettierung", so how again is it that English "gets to use a sentence" and German doesn't? German has the choice depending on context, sometimes having one word is convenient.
  - arkensaw 1y ago
    I'm not a German speaker. Why would someone use such a long word as a convenience?
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      I am. It is a semantic difference. Single entities get referred to by a single word. If you use a word group to describe it, it means you don't consider it a single "thing", but a "system" described by the relations of single "things". The composed word also has a specific meaning that the same words with space between doesn't. For example "das rote Kraut" – "red herb" and "das Rotkraut" – "red cabbage". Also suppose "red cabbage" was grown in abnormal conditions, so it doesn't have the color pigments, it is still "red cabbage", but not "red" "cabbage". This is awkward to state in English, but no problem in German.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  > I wonder do German brains work on a much longer context window because of the language? Maybe, but more due to the spelling of numbers and long sentences. Compound words are not an example of this, since Germans can parse these words just fine as different things. It just means that the lowest "tokenization" in everyday use is not the word, but subcomponents of them. Do English native speakers "tokenize" expressions in words? Do you see it as '(labelling) (of) (minced)' or '(label)l(ing) (of) (minc)(ed)' ? I can't speak for most Germans, but the algorithm I think I use is just greedy from left to right. This is also consistent with how mistokenization in common puns works, so I think this is common. In primary school we trained to recognize syllable boundaries. Is that just a German thing, or is this common in other countries? You need to know these for spelling and once you know these, separating word components becomes trivial.

usrnm 1y ago

> At least English lacks compound words or whatever German calls those 30-character constructions. Not entirely true. English, as any other Germanic language, still likes to compound words to produce a new meaning, the main difference is that, as opposed to most other Germanic languages, spaces are usually retained in writing. But this is just a spelling difference, the underlying process is the same. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics)

1718627440 1y ago
Does that mean, that "compound word" counts as a single word? And how do I distinguish between "a" "compound" "word" and "a" "compound word"?
- usrnm 1y ago
  Depends on your definition of a word and how it relates to writing. It's not such a simple question, actually. Let's consider "scheepskapitein", "Schiffskapitän" and "ship captain". All three are formed the exact same way and mean roughly the same thing, but it's customary in Dutch and German to spell it without a space and in English it's considered correct to have a space in between. Note, that there are no spaces in speech, it's simply a writing convention. So, how many words are there in this example?
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    I don't know, I think German laymen have a unambiguous understanding. "der Schiffskapitän" = 2, "des Schiffes Kapitän" = 3 Sure, linguists can dissect everything and should, but how does the English laymen perceive it?