[arp242]

It's not that German has a "unique word" for things, it's that they use compound words: multiple words written together without space to form a new word. This is a feature found in most Germanic languages except English, because reasons. It's just that German is the most commonly translated of them.

So, for example, in Dutch you would write sciencefictiontelevisieserie instead of "science fiction television series"; it's not an "unique word", just four words strung together. There are some examples that can be quite long; the longest in the dictionary is meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornissen, or "multiple personality disorders", although you can easily make it longer by adding more words: meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornisbehandeling ("multiple personality disorder treatment") or meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornisbehandelaaropleiding ("multiple personality disorder treatment education"). I miss this in English by the way; you can get creative with it and form new compound words quite easily.

Sometimes the addition or lack of a space can change something quite a lot, so you can't just insert them because it's convenient.

It sure can be annoying fitting these things in boxes at times though.

[1]: https://twitter.com/spatiegebruik/status/1434538804883427330

[lucb1e]

You add a reference but never refer to it! Let me explain for the English here :)

The Twitter link shows a picture taken at a race event, where it says on the door: wedstrijd secretariaat, meaning secretariat competition in English. It's two words, so the first modifies the second (adjective) rather than forming a compound noun, thus some wedstrijd (competition) of the secretariat seems to be held there. Writing wedstrijdsecretariaat as one word makes it a compound noun and translates as competition secretariat which is (presumably? :D) what was meant. Ha-ha! Germanic humor, I guess. (I really enjoy them at least, since it really is what people wrote and they don't even realize it. Probably ties into pentesting, where I also exploit what people incorrectly wrote?)

> Sometimes the addition or lack of a space can change something quite a lot, so you can't just insert them because it's convenient.

Correct, but note that hyphens between the parts are always legal if you think it's more readable.

For example meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornisbehandeling was not hard to get for me but then the ...behandelaarsopleiding variant is really stretching the possibilities and I'd definitely start to hyphenate there, also because it's a bit of a false start (it's an education, but you're starting off with a disorder and then segueing into treatment and then again veering off into it being an education that you're describing -- it's a bit like "The old man the boat." in English: a garden-path sentence or an intuinzin which starts off making you think it's one thing and then continues in a way that forces you to reevaluate it).

Also, if you have a reason why you didn't put an "s" between behandelaar and opleiding I'd be interested! It feels to me like there should be one but I don't know the rule.

[arp242]

Ah yeah, I started writing an example of how making a space can make a difference in meaning with that as a somewhat humorous example, but I couldn't really come up with a good way to explain it in English last night so I removed that part, but seems like I forgot to remove the reference.

meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornisbehandelaaropleiding is a bit of a contrived example, it's just an example of how you can "invent" compound words on the spot and how you can have quite a lot of words in a compound word.

> Also, if you have a reason why you didn't put an "s" between behandelaar and opleiding I'd be interested! It feels to me like there should be one but I don't know the rule.

No reason; there probably should be an "s" (I think?) The previous comment went through quite a few revision before the final version that I posted; I just missed it.