The Awful German Language

Re:The Awful German Language by rags2riches on Friday May 16, 2025 @12:58PM (#44007613)

Sure, you can say three nouns in a row in English. But can you then make them into a verb? Or and adjective? What happens when some of the three words in English already are in a form that also parses as a verb or an adjective?

English is a bastard language and it shows in its grammar.

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Re:The Awful German Language by stronglikedan on Friday May 16, 2025 @01:18PM (#44007825)

Buffalo buffalo buffalo.

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Re:The Awful German Language by nazgul17 on Saturday May 17, 2025 @12:38AM (#44012068)

I have verbified nouns on several occasions.

My colleague this week took this a step further with this sentence: "We can model the data in [such and such way]. But then the user can PEBCAK their way into [impossible situation]." So close to poetry.

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Re:The Awful German Language by rags2riches on Saturday May 17, 2025 @07:24PM (#44017744)

I was asking you to string three nouns together and verbify the resulting noun, like you effortlessly do in a language like German.

Also, note how your verbified noun is identical to the original noun. That's the lacking grammar of the bastardised English language showing.

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Re:The Awful German Language by int_19h on Sunday May 18, 2025 @03:22AM (#44019607)

The grammar isn't lacking, it's just that word function is determined by its position in the sentence and/or prepositions, rather than word mutation.

With respect to composite-noun-verbifying, it works so long as you use hyphens to make clear it's a single unit.

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