I have just got back from a cruise on the river Danube (die Donau) and although our lovely ship wasn’t a steam boat, it did remind me of the famous long German word Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän” – the captain of the Danube steam ship company!
Compound words which in English stay as individual words (example birthday card) are usually written as one word in German (so the birthday card is ‘die Geburtstagskarte’).
Of course, the longer the word is, the harder it is to read, so even in German we tend not to have THAT long words, but it can be fun to string words together to make longer words and there are some real, not made up words, which are extremely long.
A German word of the year for 1999 was (and I kid you not, it was a real word) ‘das Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz’ – the beef labeling regulation and delegation of supervision law!
If you google for the longest German word, you’ll come across various websites with lovely long German words, some real ones and some made up ones.
So, for fun, can you think of a long German word, or even better, can we ‘invent’ a long German word?
Who would like to make a start?
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