Grammatical Reflections
Oct. 21st, 2007 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishOne of the more famously lampooned aspects of the German language is the length of compound words. It was formerly possible, and grammatically correct, to simply compound whole clauses and sentence-worths of information into a single word that runs a line or so of text.
This particular aspect has been reformed in the interests of clarity in writing, but I find myself wishing today that it stayed. Because, while the grammatical structure to simply create huge adjectives is more diluted, the desire to do so remains.
I cannot count the number of times today that I've had to stare at a sentence for minutes just to figure out where the hell the subject is, only to realize that it's at the end of the first clause, and what I *thought* was a whole other separate thought as merely serving as a string of adjectives to describe the sentence. The old system, while impossible to look things up, would at least have allowed the clear visual reminder that it really is just one adjective being tacked on.
This particular aspect has been reformed in the interests of clarity in writing, but I find myself wishing today that it stayed. Because, while the grammatical structure to simply create huge adjectives is more diluted, the desire to do so remains.
I cannot count the number of times today that I've had to stare at a sentence for minutes just to figure out where the hell the subject is, only to realize that it's at the end of the first clause, and what I *thought* was a whole other separate thought as merely serving as a string of adjectives to describe the sentence. The old system, while impossible to look things up, would at least have allowed the clear visual reminder that it really is just one adjective being tacked on.
