babel: Adding ngerman' s language shorthands to english as the main document language

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[ngerman,english]{babel}
\useshorthands{"}
\addto\extrasenglish{\languageshorthands{ngerman}}
\begin{document}

\minipage{1cm}\hrulefill

\hspace{0pt}zoning-facilitated

\hspace{0pt}zoning"=facil"-itated
\endminipage
\end{document}

With lualatex you do not need the \hspace{0pt} (LuaTeX hyphenates the first word of a paragraph, which TeX doesn't)

One has to define the language specific shorthands; I've left only the hyphenation related ones:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\makeatletter
\initiate@active@char{"}
\addto\extrasenglish{\languageshorthands{english}\bbl@activate{"}}
\addto\noextrasenglish{\bbl@deactivate{"}}
\declare@shorthand{english}{"-}{\nobreak\-\bbl@allowhyphens}
\declare@shorthand{english}{"|}{%
  \textormath{\penalty\@M\discretionary{-}{}{\kern.03em}%
              \allowhyphens}{}}
\declare@shorthand{english}{""}{\hskip\z@skip}
\declare@shorthand{english}{"~}{\textormath{\leavevmode\hbox{-}}{-}}
\declare@shorthand{english}{"=}{\penalty\@M-\hskip\z@skip}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\hsize=3pt

\hskip0pt zoning-facilitated

\hskip0pt zoning-facil"-itated

\end{document}

It's quite easy also to import the ngerman shorthands:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[ngerman,english]{babel}

\makeatletter
\initiate@active@char{"}
\addto\extrasenglish{\languageshorthands{ngerman}\bbl@activate{"}}
\addto\noextrasenglish{\bbl@deactivate{"}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\hsize=3pt

\hskip0pt zoning-facilitated

\hskip0pt zoning-facil"-itated

\end{document}

Of course, ngerman has to be loaded, otherwise the shorthands would not be known; so the first alternative seems better.