Longest German word deleted into history


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A change in EU law has allowed the Germans to bin their longest word: the 63-letter monster

Rindfleischetikettierungs?berwachungsaufgaben?bertragungsgesetz.

According to the Telegraph, the monstrosity was spawned back in 1999 in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and translates as "law delegating beef label monitoring", in bite-sized English pieces.

Originally a product of the war on mad cow disease, the term has been retired as the EU is "calling a halt to the testing of healthy cattle at abattoirs".

Apparently, even Germans found the word a tad excessive - despite their penchant for extended compound nouns - and abbreviated it to the hardly more plausible RkReUAUG. Interestingly, this is the exactly the sound which can regularly be heard coming from Vulture Central's toilets of a Friday afternoon as the adsales and news room boys and girls eject an especially robust liquid lunch.

Quite which word now has the honour of being Germany's longest is uncertain, although Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe is in with a shout.

This handy term means "widow of a Danube Steamboat Company captain", and no doubt pops up regularly in everyday conversation. According to the Telegraph's Teutonic correspondent, a popular parlour game in Germany involves creating ever-longer words associated with the Danube Steamboat Company, such as the magnificent Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizit?tenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft, which translates as the ?Association for Subordinate Officials of the Head Office Management of the Danube Steamboat Electrical Services?.

A more likely contender for the longest word in German is Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung ("automobile liability insurance"), which actually appears in the dictionary.

English speakers have long struggled to match German prowess in the length department. A quick net search reveals that pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is commonly cited as our most impressive non-coined effort meriting a dictionary heads-up.

When I was a lad, it was antidisestablishmentarianism which took the popular vote, although I've always had a soft spot for the splendid supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

http://www.theregist...ned_to_history/

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And here i came to this thread thinking it was going to be a spam post not something that was actually informative.

Due to the Mad Cow disease outbreak back in the 80s until recently I was not allowed to donate blood due to having lived in Germany in the 80s.

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Moved here

Could you edit the title to something like "Longest word ban" or whatever to your liking, just as long as it's shorter? :)

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nah, the germans are just too lazy to hit the space bar.

I am sure many Germans would like to say they are conserving their keyboards/space keys. :laugh:

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Technically, most Germanic European languages, like German, and the Scandinavian languages can have words of an almost infinite length since we use compound words. While English would write "round trip", we would werite it as "rundreise" as "rund reise" would actually mean something else.

or as one of the common funny examples "Chicken pieces" would be "kyllingbiter", if you where to write it as "kylling biter" it would actually be "chicken bites". of course with the really long words with many words in it, there's a common sense factor as to where you need to start splitting it as it doesn't server a purpose as one anymore :)

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