I mean, yeah. This is an important part of the German language. They create composite words to describe a thing, and learning to break it down into its constituents is a fundamental part of reading German.
Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug
Hilfe - help
leistung - performance
Hilfeleistung - assistance
lösch - delete, extinguish
gruppen - group (team, department)
löschgruppen - (fire) extinguishing team or department
fahr - drive
zeug - thing
fahrzeug - vehicle
Assistance Extinguishing Team Vehicle
Now translate
Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
It’s also one of the most difficult parts of learning German as an adult, despite being a relatively simple syntactic rule and something we kinda-sorta emulate in English. The other part, at least for me, were false friends. Also sorry to all the lurking Germans waiting to comment, I forgot all of my German the moment I graduated college.
Oh I thought those were false cognates
That’s something different. False cognates are words that look related even tho they are not and often have a similar meaning that makes it look even harder to be related. False friends often are related but have a very different meaning. Like the German word “eventuell” meaning “maybe” which is very bad if you use it wrong. Unlike the false cognate “emoji” meaning “picture sign” and – etymologically speaking – having nothing to do with emoticon despite its similar meaning. Which is more a linguistic fun fact than any problem for learners.
Alles gut. Deine Vergesslichkeit hindert mich nicht daran, hier zu pfostieren.
As a German I can assure you that false friends are something you scare away all pupils (regardless of age). I have very intense memories of our English teacher correcting us again and again.
Regarding the composita in German: we are moving more towards the English approach by splitting these word monstrousities with hyphens. E.g. Donaudampfschifffahrtsamt may be spelled Donau-Dampfschifffahrts-Amt. Its way easier to read and write. While the hyphenated spelling is not something that is used often officially, it got more popular in the last decades.
My biggest issue with Duolingo trying to learn German honestly. Sure I can read a compound word when presented with it, but fucking Duo is like “Cool… now spell it… bitch”
German is phonetic though - once you know how pronunciation maps to the alphabet (and certain compounds), it becomes easier to spell any new word. It’s actually why there’s no Spelling Bee in German.
I gave up on duolingo very quickly because it had a ton of clearly wrong stuff too. Drops and Rosetta Stone have much better content for learning German.
That’s your issue? Not adjective declination?
I’m nearly at the end of Duolingo’s German content and spelling has mostly been quite easy (as a native English speaker). You want a spelling challenge, try French.
In which context would you use Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug instead of Feuerwehrfahrzeug?
When you’re a fireman whose job is to plan which vehicles go where or when you need to precisely specify which type of fire vehicle. Non-firemen usually say Feuerwehrfahrzeug or even Feuerwehrauto.
But the firemen would just call it by it’s abbreviation HLF of course
And obviously there is a norm for all Vehicle types in use. Here is a list of all of them https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuerwehrfahrzeuge_in_Deutschland#Feuerwehrfahrzeug-Typenliste_der_aktuell_genormten_Fahrzeuge
I mostly know Leiterwagen or Löschfahrzeug or Einsatzwagen. Feuerwehrauto is what children say. Also “Wagen” makes sense because when there is an emergency you refer to the multitude of vehicles that move out and the group of people as a “Löschzug” an “extinguishing unit” but Zug also means train and a train has “wagons” -> Wagen
It makes more context to translate “Zeug” as “tool” in most compound words, it is its original meaning like in Feuerzeug, Flugzeug, Fahrzeug, Rüstzeug.
In English, I like to think it would be a “thingie.” Like Germans are constantly trying to remember the word “lighter” and they’re like, “you know, the whatsit, the… fire… thingie.”
No, it’s literally not. It is “tool” or “gadget”. Not just any object or dingsbums.
Zeug used to mean something different back in the day.
Gesundheit.
Come on, I know there’s Germans about. What the hell does it say lol? Here’s what Claude says:
The fire department’s rescue and firefighting group vehicle… It transports firefighters, ladders, tools, hoses… (text cuts off)
So I am guessing “Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug” is “rescue and firefighting group vehicle?”
Probably a "supporting firefighter group vehicle“ to be exact.
Edit: this word is kind of bizarre, because it is a composition of 3 compound words which each are compound words themselves.
Hilfe-leistung (Help Giving = Support) Lösch-Gruppe (Extinguishing Group = Firefighters) Fahr-zeug (Drive Thing = Vehicle)
American here who studied German for eight years, graduated with a minor in German, and lived there for one year:
I’m not sure how to properly translate this children’s book.
The long word breaks into easily-understood pieces:
“help-ability-extinguish-group-travel-thing”
But in order to get a proper concept back out of it you need to know what order the pieces go together in and I don’t know that.
travel-thing is a vehicle.
help-ability is emergency services
Beyond that I have to guess — Is group-travel-thing a crew vehicle, making this a crew vehicle for extinguishing?
Or maybe extinguish-group is a fire crew and this is a vehicle for fire crews?
Either way I feel like the author is using a lot more word-parts than they should have to for what is (clearly in the picture) better described as a pump truck.
No, that’s actually the official term for a very specific type of vehicle. It’s a hybrid between a Löschgruppenfahrzeug (a multipurpose firefighting vehicle) and a Rüstwagen (which carries equipment for light non-firefighting purposes).
People who actually deal with them just say “HLF”.
I had to look it up, it’s the technical term for a certain firefighting vehicle.
In particular, what distinguishes it from a normal crew firefighting vehicle (Löschgruppenfahrzeug) is its equipment for “Technische Hilfeleistung” (technical help-providing) which basically means it carries equipment beyond basic extinguishing agents. If you’re physically stuck in your car after a crash, a Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug has to arrive to cut open the doors.
A Hilfeleistungslöschgruppenfahrzeug
A (small) Löschgruppenfahrzeug. Note that it only contains firefighting equipment.
It was a study-abroad year and the year ended. I never had the permission to stay and work.
The other commenters have already explained it diligently, but I wanted to hop on for something related.
As a German speaker, it actually irritates me a little, that English doesn’t agglutinate. Let’s take the word “gum ball machine”.
Which is it? It’s a machine. So are “gum” and “ball” descriptors of “machine”? Well no, they’re all nouns. But they’re not all subjects or objects of a sentence. They’re one subject together. But they’re not written together.
If I had a red gum ball machine, is it a red machine made out of gum that produces balls? Ok, it can also be spelt gumball machine. But that’s still multiple words per concept.
I like my nouns to be one word if it’s one thing and one subject.
“Gumball” is the only correct spelling; “gum ball” is incorrect. So the gum and ball are at least connected. But you’re right about “red gumball machine.” The gumballs or machine might be what’s red.
Google translate says “the rescue firefighting group vehicle”
TIL that löschen is also used to mean extinguishing fires. Firefighter support vehicle, I guess? Or supporting firefighting vehicle?
Hilfeleistungs-Löschgruppen-Fahrzeug is a very odd composite word for Germans too. It’s not commonly used, this is probably "Amtsdeutsch“, a bureaucratic way of naming things as accurately as possible. Mostly used like that by government institutions and Microsoft help documents in german.
See also: Umschaltfeststelltaste (Caps Lock) und Gruppenrichtlinienbearbeitungsprogramm (Group policy Editor).
Shudders. This is why I (as a native German speaker) prefer english documentation.
Löschen can also mean to offload cargo from a ship if you were only thinking about to delete as a second meaning
Literally it’s: Supportserviceextinguishinggroupvehicle, it’s a kind of all-rounder firetruck and the most commen one.
The “Hilfeleistung” means that it isn’t just for firefighting but also other kinds calls “Technische Hilfe” / technical support
and the “Löschgruppe” refers to the core capability to fight fires as well as the personell on board, a “Gruppe” is a specific tactical unit in german firefighting of 9 people
Löschen can also mean to offload cargo from a ship…
I did not know this one either, and it seems even more different from delete/erase/extinguish. I had to look this up; wiktionary says that the unloading sense is actually from a different root (MND lössen, cognate with “los”), which may have changed due to association with the “erasure” sense, particularly in the context of erasure from ship inventories and logbooks.
Also, thank you for the context. This kind of detail tends to be extremely difficult to search for.
So an arselöschen would be a means of putting out fires with your bum bum!
I don’t think that’s how it works. Most compound words are nouns not verbs.
Also ass is “Arsch” not “Arse”. You could say Arschlöscher, but if I heard this without context I would think of something that deletes asses.
If I would need to construct a noun that describes a bum bum that extinguishes fires I would say it should be “Löscharsch” maybe even “Feuerlöscharsch”.
These are real words in the sense that German speaker should immediately understand them but you will not find them in a dictionary. That’s what makes German different from many languages. We can make up understandable compound words on the fly.
When I was in school many notebooks came with a loose sheet to absorb the ink from our fountain pens. These are called “Löschpapier” (extinguishing paper).
A common joke was, to say you should toss the “Löschpapier” into a fire to extinguish it.
I tried it once. It burned quite well unfortunately.
