How well does autocorrect (i.e. autocorrection software for cellphones) handle German compound words?

[u/OnkelMickwald]

I'm asking because, as a Swede, I'm thoroughly tired of the compact inability of autocorrect software on modern cell phones to handle Swedish compound words (which they invariably treat as two or more words).

I'm curious because German is the largest language I immediately could think of that uses a similar amount of compound words as Swedish.

[u/Diligent-Shoe542]

Depends. I think the problem is that is has to know the compound word. If it doesn't, then it doesn't work well. May be one of the reasons why "Deppenleerzeichen", so splitting compound words into their parts became a thing.

[u/OnkelMickwald → u/[deleted]]

It's funny because spelling software in desktop-based text editors have no issues with Swedish compound words (and I'm guessing German ones too). Google docs have some issues, but Microsoft and LibreOffice seriously have no issues in my experience.

I wonder why mobile spelling software has to suck so badly. I'm guessing the technology is radically different...

[u/AloneFirefighter7130 → u/OnkelMickwald]

I'm using current word regularly and it definitely not only has a problem with compound nouns, but also with the grammar of when to split compound verb and adjectives, such as "weiterzukommen" since those are sometimes written together and sometimes apart depending on use case.

[u/OnkelMickwald → u/AloneFirefighter7130]

Word is also in my experience pretty excellent in its handling of Swedish. With LibreOffice I had to find a particular set of Swedish packages and fiddle around with installing them, but once that was done, LibreOffice Writer was as good as Word IMO.

The reason I'm bringing up LibreOffice is that their language packages are open source, whereas Microsoft probably keep theirs to themselves. There's some kind of itch in me that wants to be able to integrate LibreOffice's open language packs into mobile virtual keyboard software.

[u/1porridge]

All in all it's working fine but it would be nice if autocorrect knew more words. Sometimes it doesn't get the words right or it changes them because it doesn't know them even though I even spelled them correctly. It usually only happens with very long and words that aren't commonly used in normal conversations. I mean I think words like Blumentopffarben (flowerpot colors), Elefantenrüssel (elephant trunk) or Silvesterraketen (New Year's rockets) really should be in the database, it's not like they're used that rarely. Not daily but still not that uncommon, I think. And they're not even that long, only 2 words combined.

[u/OnkelMickwald → u/1porridge]

This is exactly my issue with writing Swedish on mobile virtual keyboards too. It's exhausting that these software utilizes a simple fixed bank of words, instead of having features that can handle the grammar and logic behind the concept of compound words (just like many other grammatical rules that they already handle, btw) which would enable users to combine words on-the-go without the spelling software going bananas because it doesn't recognize the word when it does a simple string-compare to its word database.

[u/U03A6]

Often terribly. I often don't get the word I want but something nonsensical that doesn't exist. Eg Holzweiß instead of Holzhaus. Or Brotzeitdünger instead of Bruttosozialprodukt. 

[u/NenGuten]

Terribly, that's why everyone is writing them wrong.

[u/CaptainPoset]

It doesn't, most of the time. It tries to correct them to compound words in English grammar.

[u/SeriousPlankton2000]

Mediocre. If it's a common word it's in the database.

[u/PerfectDog5691]

Poor.

[u/smallblueangel]

It depends. But mostly not that good.

[u/This_Seal]

Its horrible and not useful at all. It can already barely handle other areas of the language.

[u/KlaysPlays]

I'd say pretty well