words English is missing:

[ratcreature]

Verschlimmbesserung, i.e. a portmanteau of Verbesserung (improvement) and Verschlimmerung (deterioration/worsening), to describe intended improvements or upgrades that end up making everything worse. Also used as a verb ("verschlimmbessern"), cousin to the equally useful "kaputtreparieren" (repair/tinker with a thing to the point that it becomes broken). Not entirely unrelated to this language observation, I'm still trying to decide whether I should opt to display everything on LJ in my style (which I find confusing, because I'm used to comms and journals all having their layout), or deal with the new comment pages on comms that have not disabled them, which unfortunately includes a number of fest comms I'd been browsing.

Comments

here via latest

[ursamajor]

That is an awesome concept and an excellent use of portmanteau. \o/

Re: here via latest

[ratcreature]

Yes, I miss it frequently when posting in English online, because this is so common, especially on the internet (LJ all the time, delicious breaking its service, and so on), it really needs a succinct term. Really, English ought to borrow it, like it did with Schadenfreude.

[tazlet]

"kaputtreparieren" kind of speaks for itself and should be promptly adopted.

[ratcreature]

Yes, English should borrow these. At first it seems a bit odd that combining opposites results in such useful concepts, but it probably just comes from us human failing at our intentions so often.

[rosaw]

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. German has many words we could really use in English. Schadenfreude for example. ;-) I think kaputtreparieren is one of the greatest words in the universe.

Do you know an Italian word that means something like 'suffers pain when others are embarrassed'? -- I saw it once (I don't read or speak Italian) but can't find it again. I don't mean to assume that since you are literate in German that you know all European languages -- I don't know a Spanish equivalent (my somewhat underused secondlanguage) but I thought you might have an idea.

[ratcreature]

Yes, English should adopt these. Especially on the internet I miss them as description of changes quite often. Not just LJ, just a while ago it fit Delicious.

And I'm afraid I can't help with the Italian. I only had English, Latin and French in school and then took some Spanish courses later, and I'm not really fluent in any of these romance languages, so I can't even guess. Though I think that embarrassment is connected to pain in word roots is quite common, e.g. in German if something is embarrassing it's "peinlich" which derives from an older word for pain in German, especially if it is inflicted by others, which is "Pein" (you can see how that shares the root with the English, basically it's the same Germanic word, and it also has torture connotations, like "peinliche Befragung" doesn't mean embarrassing questions, but is an old term for questioning with torture).

[basingstoke]

Those are both fantastic words.

[ratcreature]

Yes, they really encapsulate good product-design intentions gone wrong.

[kittydesade]

Here via IM from a friend, who said that this is a good word and it should feel good.

And 'tis true.

[ratcreature]

Heh. Really English should make it a loanword.

[kittydesade]

Really and truly should. English, for all its words, isn't always the best when it comes to useful words.

[mecurtin]

I'm trying to grasp the precise distinction between verschlimmbessern and kaputtreparieren -- both of which are absolutely critical terms for software and website developers, of course. I guess it's:

verschlimmbessern: it wasn't broken, we upgraded, we made it less useful (though not necessarily broken)

kaputtreparieren: we were fixing or tinkering with things everyone agreed needed to be fixed, but now it's completely broken

And what's the noun form for kaputtreparieren?

[ratcreature]

Yes, that's essentially it. I think kaputtreparieren describes more of process, which also means that there isn't really a noun that is in use, aside from how you can amost always make a verb a noun in German to describe activity, i.e. "das Kaputtreparieren". I think it has the connotation of perfectionism gone wrong or too far, when someone fiddles and fiddles with something and eventually the thing just can't take the modifications any more.

[rheanna]

That is an excellent and useful word!

[ratcreature]

Yes, it describes so many things.

[astridv]

That was the word I've been thinking of, yep. Nothing describes it better.

[ratcreature]

It applies to service "improvements" so very often, especially with internet stuff. English really ought to adopt it.

[saraht]

So is "kaputt" a separable or inseparable prefix?

[ratcreature]

Er. Separable I think? I conjugate it as "ich repariere das kaputt, du reparierst das kaputt..."

[janice-lester.livejournal.com]

"kaputtreparieren", I love it. And I think I can remember it to use it again in the future! :-) (my bad high school German is rusting gradually away in the back of my mind. I only really have cause to use it when browsing vintage fountain pens on ebay.de)

And the other one, though less memorable (IMHO), is wonderful. I mean, repairing something to death is a common enough thing that we make jokes about it, but the fact that German has come up with a word for improvements that suck seems to suggest a sort of universal inevitability about it, as if it's only to be expected. A sort of standard bureaucratic function, perhaps.

You could try using ?format=light on a case-by-case basis? You might be able to get a scriptlet for it rather than having to type it. I have ones in my Safari bookmark bar for ?mode=reply and ?style=mine. Just a thought.

[ratcreature]

Unfortunately "format=light" also has the new comment pages. It's incomprehensible what's "light" about it, but they broke that too.