> Like, even if a native German speaker had never heard that compound word, they'd still understand it because it's just a combination of other words?

Usually yes but occasionally compound words take on a different or additional meaning than one might think based purely off the meaning of the compounds. Furthermore, homonyms are a thing in German and it’s not always immediately clear which meaning a compound carries in an unknown compound words. Also, some (compound) words take on new meanings over time when they’re often used metaphorically.

Examples: Weltschmerz, Ohrwurm, sturmfrei

> this German word doesn't exist in English

It’s very common that a language has a distinct word for a concept for which no distinct word exists in another language. But that’s not the same as composite words. Although sometimes composites take on a different or additional meaning than just the combination of their parts (see below).

I can think of a bunch of German words that really do not exist in English except for their loanwords:

• Zeitgeist
• Weltschmerz
• Wanderlust
• Fernweh
• Zugzwang
• Ohrwurm
• sturmfrei

I hope this will come up on google when people search for “zelensky macron wedding photos”.

> $12000 per kid per month

My thoughts when I read that: they better have a staff to student ratio greater or equal to one.

For that kind of money you could easily hire a good teacher with special education qualifications that comes to your home to teach your only child for 4 hours 5 times per week.

Depends on what your metric for “more” is.

• Number of individual cells? Bacteria win.
• Combined mass? Human body wins.