Ich bin auch in der Zwischenstufe des Lernens der deutschen Sprache (aber hoffentlich nicht ewig!) Ich erinnere mich das einige andere Hubskiers können oder lernen Deutsch… vielleicht sollen wir einen Verein formen :)
I love compound words in German. It's satisfying when you can use your existing knowledge to deduce the meaning of a new word. It's like solving a puzzle. I saw the word "zeitgenössisch" on a sign last week, I knew that "Zeit" meant time and "Genosse" meant comrade (from studying the Cold War at high school) so I figured "genössisch" must mean "same" (it means 'common'). So given the context (art), "zeitgenössich", or time-same must mean "contemporary". How prevalent are compound words in Dutch?
Not as common to string a whole bunch of words together as Germans love to do, but we have some great long words. The longest in the dictionary is meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornissen, meaning multiple (meervoudige, literally more-folded) personality (persoonlijkheid, where lijkheid is the -ality part), s (possesive), disorder (stoornis). A unique thing about Dutch is that we use a lot of diminutives. Pretty much any noun can be appended with -je or -tje: fiets becomes fietsje, brood becomes broodje. Similar to how the suffix -let changes the meaning of book to booklet (to something smaller) but for almost every word. It's often used for talking about cute things, small things or insignificant things and it's perfect for when you want to sound really patronizing.
Ooh German has -chen which must be related to the Dutch -tje. Same diminutive effect, although I've only seen it used to transform certain words that are recognised by the dictionary (e.g. Mädchen - girl, Ampelmännchen). I'm sure that anyone could use it for patronising/comic effect, however. A nice (or annoying) benefit of this diminutive is that it changes the gender of the word to neuter. So Mädchen has neuter gender even though it is obviously describing something feminine. That really bugs beginners, but the tendency for endings to dictate gender is on the whole a useful one because the language doesn't really give you any other cues.