Harbour and marine works

Tideunabhängig is one word where English needs a phrase: a port that a ship can reach at any state of the tide. German builds it by a rule that works on many adjectives which take a prepositional object. Start from unabhängig von der Tide, move the noun to the front and drop the preposition, and its article and its case go with it: tideunabhängig. The same step turns beständig gegen Seewasser into seewasserbeständig and abhängig vom Wetter into wetterabhängig. Such a compound is read from the back: the last part is the adjective, and the first part says what it is measured against. Sometimes a linking s appears, as in ortsunabhängig, and that has to be learned with the word. English does the same thing only in a handful of settled words, such as « waterproof » and « seaworthy », and otherwise keeps the preposition: independent of the tide.