[throw310822]

In fact, with added spaces, works fine in English too (since English is also a Germanic language):

the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button.

And extended:

the Donau steamship cruise organization's captain's cap button's colour factory's entry gate.

EDIT: Let's not forget to mention its Java implementation, which goes full German:

DonauSteamshipCruiseOrganizationCaptainButtonsColorFactory

[ggm]

The German is only worse because we want to treat it worse, the sentence isn't much longer and they're broadly equal in conceptual cost.

Which isn't surprising since Anglo Saxon is at the heart of the non French bits of English.

[marcosscriven]

Exactly. It’s not like you can even hear the absence of spaces in one or the other. It’s purely a writing choice.

[ggm]

Australian ad of 30+ years ago:

avagoodweekend and dontforgetaboutheaeroguard

[cmrdporcupine]

And I think the use of spaces between pieces of nouns in English has more to do with the fact that -- in comparison to German -- the pronounciation is so unpredictable from the spelling that not having the visual indicator between pieces could leave you completely lost -- "what word is this?" Whereas German has very regular and consistent rules of pronounciation that map closely to spellings, so once habituated you can scan it from the page and spit it out more reliably.

Still, having grown up with English as my first language and (partially) learned German as a young man, learning German gave me more appreciation for English. Which only grew once I studied a bit of Anglo-Saxon. I love our language, there's just something about its character.

A spelling reform would be nice (though entirely impractical) though.

[yurishimo]

If you enjoy English and German but want something with a more modern twist, might I suggest Dutch? I started learning it about 3 years ago and it's very regular in terms of spelling/pronunciation. Once you learn the irregular verbs (the most common ones, like in any language it seems...), many things will just "make sense", especially if you already know English and German!

[bashkiddie]

Awesome example.

Germans are allowed to write compound nouns in hyphens

Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschafts-Kapitänsmützenknopf-Farbenfabrik-Eingangstor

[umanwizard]

It’s not considered prescriptively correct, but often nowadays people just write them with spaces (like in English), especially on phones, because hitting spacebar makes spellcheck/autocorrect kick in.

[nathell]

Which is a combination of lisp-case and CamelCase. Neat!

[mejutoco]

I believe some dashes would make that even more correct English.

Normally whatever is acting as an adjective ie "donut-eating relative" but with such a long example it seems a bit trickier.

[pjmlp]

I rather see the Objective-C one, https://github.com/Quotation/LongestCocoa

[rendang]

The river has an English name - the Danube