[BalinKing]

From what I've read, the German phenomenon isn't actually German-specific after all, and English does it too; the difference is just that English keeps the spaces when written. Like, linguists apparently consider "vending machine" to be a perfectly cromulent compound word (among other things, consider that the stress falls on "vending" instead of "machine," which wouldn't(?) happen if "vending" was being used as a bona fide standalone word). Turns out, there's not even an accepted general definition of what a "word" even is in the first place, because different languages vary so much.

A slightly more thorough discussion from an actual linguist: https://youtu.be/tfnANe2YUwM?si=LAxriH-RuqmUgrxl.