@DavidCarlisle 😁 I've read The awful German language. Still, you get used to it after a while. Giants as Donaudampfschifffahrtsgenossenschaftsstandarddampfüberdruckablassventilsversagensinzindenzsenkungsmaximierungsfortschrittsberichtsprüfungskommissionswutabdampfreflexminimierregelwerkskorrekturvorschlagsliste are artificial and meaningless, whereas Nummernschildbedruckungsmaschine is meaningful, sounds right, and can be written as Nummernschild-Bedruckungsmaschine to clarify the semantics.

Good that David practises his German,.he will need it in the summer.

@DavidCarlisle As for penalty alterations, if the difference 1 is deemed too small, the suggestions for minimal the penalty difference in the word could be stated in the documentation of \babelposthyphenation.

Still, small differences might be used not only to catch bugs in the algorithms but also to denote the language preferences of the author. For instance, you may view “Unnatürlichkeit” (German for “unnaturalness”) as “Un” + “Natürlichkeit” (German for the opposite of “naturalness”) or “unnatürlich” + “keit” (German for the property of being “unnatural”).

Depending on your view, you may very slightly prefer on the two hyphenations “Un-natürlichkeit” and “Unnatürlich-keit” and express your preference via a tiny difference in the penalties – as a machine-readable and understandable documentation of your preference.

Typo correction: “the suggestions for minimal the penalty difference” -> “the suggestions for the minimal penalty difference”.

… And a long word I indeed typeset is “Zustandsübergangsfunktionsfamilie”, which is German for a “family of functions of state transitions”.

@AlMa0 your call of course but 1 or 2 isn't "tiny" so much as "imperceptibly small" look for example at the default value, you want to allow all valid hyphenation points with just a mild preference to stretch space instead. The value plain and latex use is 50, anything less isn't really different to 0. so if you wanted low penalty breaks at compound joins and higher penalty for breaking a component, I'd use something like 30 and 80 not 49 and 50

@DavidCarlisle When we have discussed setting up penalties in math we have also considered larger steps. (I have not yet got any intuitive feeling for what is needed to see an effect, but not a too strong effect.)

Starting the return trip. Germany celebrates with a large strike :-(

@UlrikeFischer -- Safe travels. I hope your adventure has been memorable, in a good way.