> German famously has a word for nearly everything. I'm not sure that's elegant, in that it requires learning a far greater number of words.
That's not quite how it works though, right? Compound words are exactly that, combining two or more words to narrow down the meaning, without having to invent a new word. It's almost like "if not" vs "unless"...
Correct. The chief difference between English and German in this respect is the use of spaces (and what is considered a word). In German, you can basically drop the spaces from a noun phrase and call it a word, but it's basically a low-consequence surface syntax difference.
Side note: ancient Greek didn't use spaces, and many other languages (Thai and Written Chinese are the ones with which I'm most familiar) either don't use spaces or make spaces optional. The distinction between a phrase and a word gets a bit blurry at times, and I find the distinction is seldom useful, particularly when making comparisons across languages.
Fascinating! I had no idea. I stand by my main point, but perhaps German wasn't a good example. It's just the one that comes up all the time when people say "Did you know X language has a word for Y?", it's almost always German. Now I know why!
That's not quite how it works though, right? Compound words are exactly that, combining two or more words to narrow down the meaning, without having to invent a new word. It's almost like "if not" vs "unless"...