I think word count is not the best metric precisely because of what you mention. "Krankenversicherungskarte" is one word vs the three word "health insurance card", but they convey the same information in roughly the same amount of characters.

Overall I don't find German particularly verbose, only sometimes a small phrase is condensed into a single word.

[–] Pingudiem@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Hm?

[–] Lysergid@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

I don’t know german but it seems to be more logical to have one word for “health insurance card” since it describes one class of objects. Better than spelling 3 nouns where one partially describes what object is and other nouns act like clarification