german is so complicated

english is a germanic language, so in theory it is easy to learn for english native speakers, but sometimes it just throws you curveballs.

german (like sanskrit) has a ton of compound nouns. for example, the word for "glove" is "hand-shoe," or "handschuh."

usually it's pretty obvious where to split the word, but sometimes it's confusing. example from this week's "die zeit" (more or less the most respected german paper).

"Die Differenzierungswächter hätten es gern, dass wir so lange differenzieren, bis wir feststellen, dass es keine Deutschen gibt, keine Türken, keinen Islam, keine Ehrenmorde und keine Zwangsehen."

("The diversity hawks would be satisfied only when we differentiate people enough until we have no more Germans, Turks, Islam, honor killings, and forced marriages.")

the word "zwangsehen" is a compound noun, and is confusing because it can be read in two ways:

zwang sehen : forcibly seeing (doesn't make sense, unless someone is forcing you to watch TV or something)

or, what occured to me and my (native german speaking) buddy only a few minutes later....

zwangs ehe : a forced marriage

i dont think the first example is even viable (as in, all compound nouns with 'zwang' would need the "s" in between to make it correct), but at first glance it's still confusing.