back to article Germans purge selves of indigestible 63-letter word

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

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

    45 letters and in the OED.

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

      Nice. It just rolls off the tongue.

      1. Otto von Humpenstumpf

        Re: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

        translates into German as "Quarzstaublunge", literally "quartz dust lung".

        Never let it be said us Germans weren't efficient... :o)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    antidisestablishmentarianism...

    ...might actually get some genuine airings this week with the current focus on the voting by CofE bishops in the House of Lords.

    1. Nigel 11

      Re: antidisestablishmentarianism...

      My thought too. Unlike most lengthy detritus in the dictionary, this word is actually useful (and has been so for centuries). If it didn't exist, political discourse would require that it be invented.

  3. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    floxinoxinihilipilification

    A pathetic 27 letters, but you cannot say it is worthless.

    1. Jedit Silver badge
      Headmaster

      "A pathetic 27 letters, but you cannot say it is worthless"

      Many of us probably can't say it, period. However, I do know for sure that you can't spell it. It's "floccinaucinihilipilification", and it's 29 letters long - one more than "antidisestablishmentarianism".

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    IT Angle

    There is even an IT angle

    Any one who does some kind of text mashing should be aware of the corner cases. If you're writing any kind of dictionary manager/query you actually should be aware of this stuff.

    Now if you know the longest word in English is <32 characters you could do a length count in 5 bits.

    But if you want to be multi lingual the it's 6 bits.

    1. Kubla Cant

      Re: There is even an IT angle

      Although English isn't an agglomerative language, it's dangerous to make assumptions about maximum word length because you can almost always add an affix. Before antidisestablishmentarianism* existed, there may have been people who practiced protoantidisestablishmentarianism .

      *The crappy Firefox spellchecker has put a red line under "antidisestablishmentarianism" and "agglomerative". I guess it's only happy with a language level like "See John run. John runs to the shop."

      1. Nigel 11

        Re: There is even an IT angle

        Maybe with more CPU cycles, they could start analyzing words with prefixes and suffixes, and put a wiggly brown line under words that might be OK but aren't actually in its dictionary. (Ie, words that break down as common prefixes and suffixes and something that is a known word in the middle.)

      2. Stevie

        The crappy Firefox spellchecke

        " I guess it's only happy with a language level like "See John run. John runs to the shop." "

        It is until you teach it different. Just be sure of your spelling before you add it to your personal dictionary.

        Techies. Tch!

      3. sisk

        Re: There is even an IT angle

        ...because you can almost always add an affix

        Prepsuedoantidisestablishmentarianismist?

      4. Turtle

        @Kubla Cant: Re: There is even an IT angle

        "The crappy Firefox spellchecker has put a red line under 'antidisestablishmentarianism' and 'agglomerative'. I guess it's only happy with a language level like 'See John run. John runs to the shop.'"

        "Basic English" - now redesignated "Firefox English"!

  5. Monkey Bob

    They had an example of this in the German GCSE book we used, IIRC it was...

    vierwaldstaterseedampfschiffgesellsschaftkapitansmutzensternlein

    I can't remember how to say anything meaningful in German, but that stuck in there somehow. Any German speakers here? Did I get it right?

    1. Schultz

      That's not German, that's Swiss

      So I refuse to give a translation.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That's not German, that's Swiss

        Herr Schultz, don't be silly. You're just being obstinate. :-D

      2. Richard 120
        Thumb Up

        Re: That's not German, that's Swiss

        Schultz, that is the best example of typical German humour I have ever read, you owe me a new keyboard.

    2. Squander Two

      Translation

      The little metal star on the hat of a captain in the Vierwald steamboat company.

  6. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    At least they're finally stopping BSE testing as it's magically disappeared ... even though it was obviously never in Europe anyway ( not even in the cattle that the French would routinely send to slaughter for food use when wierd 'mad' symptoms manifested themselves ... )

  7. Schultz

    Computernachrichtentextrechtschreibprüfungsergebnissbeurteilungsnote

    I just wanted to put you on notice, that the Registernachrichtentextrechtschreibprüfungsergebnissbewertungsnotenerfassung has been performed and the Nachrichtentextrechtschreibprüfungsergebnissbewertungsnotenerfassungsspeicherort is right here on the comment pages.

    5.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Battle/Victor/Warlord generation

    Those of us from the Battle/Victor/Warlord generation will surely remember.

    Achtung!Schweinhund!HandeHoch!ForYouZeVarIsOverMeinFreund.

    And speaking of that generation, those Commando 64-pagers are apparently still going strong...

  9. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    The Dutch have their own way of creating massive words:

    Hottentottensoldatententententoonstellingspersonenautoparkeerterrein

    is one construct, but their tendency to create words with an uncomfortable number of consecutive consonants really stands out:

    angstschreeuw

    with 8 was long held to be the champion, but

    slechtstschrijvend

    might top that with 9 (jury still out on whether this word is OK. Trust the Welsh to come up with place names that (appear) to consist only of consonants:

    Cwmtwrch, Bwlch and Mwnt were all places I have passed on my meanderings in Wales.

    In these cases the 'w' is pronounced more or less like an "oo" as in food

    1. Ru
      Alien

      Huh, I thought you had to go much further east to get crazy long consecutive consonant chains. Georgian and Armenian seem to contain rather less conveniently pronounceable words... "ɡvbrdɣvnis" (the super-useful "he's plucking us") and khghchmtank̕ ("conscience", apparently).

      I think they have Dutch beaten on the number of phonemes they can wring out of a bunch of consonants, if nothing else.

    2. peredur
      Headmaster

      Welsh vowels

      'W' is a vowel in Welsh. What's more, Welsh is a transparent language (as linguists call it). This means that each letter in the language's written form is associated with a single sound (more or less) in the spoken language. The Welsh 'w' is therefore always pronounced much like the English 'oo'.

      Exceptions to Welsh orthographical transparency would be:

      * the letter 'Y' can have one of two sounds: 'ee' or 'uh'. There are clear rules as to which to use. (In Turkish, this difference is indicated by the lack of a dot over the 'i' for the dark ('uh') sound. The clear sound uses the familiar 'i' with a dot).

      * vowels can be either long or short, so an 'i' can either be short as 'i' in 'pig' or long like the 'ee' in 'seed'. Where there is any doubt, a circumflex can be put over the vowel to indicate that it is long, such as the 'w' in 'dŵr'.

      Otherwise, you pretty much pronounce Welsh words as you see them. You need to know the rules, though. The Welsh alphabet has a number of digraphs (ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th) that figure in the alphabet as single letters and are sorted as single letters in dictionaries and indices for example.

      Other languages use letters that in English are consonants to indicate vowels or semi-vowels. An 'r' in Czech, for example, can be a vowel as in 'Brno'. The same applies to the Czech 'l' as in 'Vltava'.

      English is unusual in that its orthography makes pretty much no sense at all unless you're a specialist in language history. So applying English orthographical conventions to other languages often says more about English than it does about the language being commented upon.

      I notice that somebody else has already commented on the use of spaces between words, so I'll not repeat it here.

    3. lglethal Silver badge
      Joke

      Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch

      Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch just doesnt work... You end up having to clear your throat after every second word because in English you only make those sound when your trying to bring up a very stubborn bit of flem!

      Saying that , it's still easier to understand then Glaswegian...

      1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch

        Ik ben een Brit in Nederland en ik heb geen enkel probleem hiermee, maar ik ben er dan ook geboren.

      2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Happy

        Re: Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch

        "Saying that , it's still easier to understand then Glaswegian..."

        Curiously Glaswegians who've learned Dutch and German have no trouble in either language.

        Odd that....

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch

        Pah! You just need some exercise :-)

        I have no problems whatsoever.

      4. Turtle

        Re: Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch

        "You end up having to clear your throat after every second word because in English you only make those sound when your trying to bring up a very stubborn bit of flem!"

        In English that's "phlegm" but in Flemish, it's, uh.... ugh.

      5. pdebarra
        Trollface

        Re: Non-Dutch people speaking Dutch

        I sincerely hope you meant "phlegm". That sort of thing is frowned upon, even in Europe.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Being a Dutch person and having a good understanding of German as well I have to say I quite enjoy this topic!

  10. Anonymous Coward 101

    Does anybody remember that quiz presented by Paul Coia, in which stupidly long words were a common part? I see a Wiki contributor has also remembered:

    "In 1988 Coia became the host of the BBC gameshow Catchword, memorable for the fact that seemingly every contestant endeavoured to employ the words floccinaucinihilipilification or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis during their efforts. He has since presented a number of other quizzes on various satellite and cable channels."

  11. Crisp

    This thread is full of words that look like variable names I've seen.

    I maintain some awful code.

    1. Nigel 11
      IT Angle

      Re: This thread is full of words that look like variable names I've seen.

      Awful code? Or just code written by a person whose first language is not English, whose idea of a good variable name is therefore not the same as yours?

      1. Crisp

        Re: This thread is full of words that look like variable names I've seen.

        Yes, absolutely awful code.

        Written by a person who's native language was English.

        Who's idea of a good variable name involves some of the worst hungarianesque notation (in an ide that will frigging tell you what type and what class a method belongs to) that I've ever seen.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Value for money

    tank <-> Schutzengrabenvernichtungpanzerkraftwagen

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Value for money

      Or just Panzer?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Tank

        It's "Panzerkampfwagen" often shortened to 'Pzkpfw'.

        "Panzer" is just armour, in general - in many cases this still works but that's not what it's actually called.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Tank

          In English we also refer to some vehicles in official literature as 'Armoured Fighting Vehicle' - which is the same thing.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: 'Armoured Fighting Vehicle'

            I just road tested 'Armoured Fighting Vehicle' and 'Schutzengrabenvernichtungpanzerkraftwagen' on my (German) girlfriend. Even she agrees 'Armoured Fighting Vehicle' is easier to say, but reckons 'Schutzengrabenvernichtungpanzerkraftwagen' sounds like it has a more finely engineered feel to it and is probably the less pleasant to have pointed at you in anger, but might be useful in traffic jams.

  13. Nigel 11

    Agglutinative languages

    German (and Turkish and others) basically don't put spaces in a noun phrase, so there's no real significance to the length of a "word" and you're free to invent your own. Worth noting that spaces are actually a relatively modern development in writing. Theancientsdidn'tusespacesatall.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Agglutinative languages

      "German (and Turkish and others) basically don't put spaces in a noun phrase"

      Yes, but that does not make them agglutinative languages, which is a rather different thing. In an agglutinative language, if you separate the different morphemes, they do not really make sense just standing there by themselves.

      1. pdebarra

        Re: Agglutinative languages

        German wouldn't be an agglutinative language, though, as it's only nouns that get lumped together like that. Prepositions, articles (or other means of expressing definiteness) etc. are not included.

  14. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
    Boffin

    Reading glasses

    Due to extremely poor eyesight I have high magnification reading glasses, which means the longest word I can see all in one go in this type size is about 10 letters. Makes long words quite inconvenient...

  15. ganymede io device

    RkReUAUG maybe 63 but it is 65 characters long when using a keyboard that does not support umlauts.

    Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      A keyboard that doesn't support umlauts?

      Get one that supports the dieresis then.

      Or learn about input methods. Mac OS has them. Linux and Unix have them. Windows has this silly one where you press <Alt> and a three digit number; as if anyone wants to memorize a bunch of three digit codes. <Alt>129 is the magic code for ü.

      1. peredur
        Boffin

        Re: A keyboard that doesn't support umlauts?

        I agree with learning about input methods (and Windows <Alt> codes if you really must use Windows). Personally, though, if I'm typing in a language other than my default, I simply change to a more appropriate keyboard layout. Both Linux, which I use, and Windows (which I occasionally have to support) allow you to do it easily - with a select list in the taskbar or equivalent.

        Of course you need to be familiar with the layout of the keyboard in question if you're going to do this. I use French (which is really easy), Spanish (which is not quite so easy) and English (default as the laptop was bought in Britain) keyboard layouts. Being a touch-typist helps.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: A keyboard that doesn't support umlauts?

          « Of course you need to be familiar with the layout of the keyboard in question if you're going to do this. I use French (which is really easy), Spanish (which is not quite so easy) and English (default as the laptop was bought in Britain) keyboard layouts. »

          By French you mean AZERTY? That has to be the most evil keyboard layout to have ever seen the light of day. You cannot even type bloody *French* properly on the damned thing! (Try writing "Ça ! C'est ça que disais. À plus.") Good luck getting a capital "ç" and capital accented letters.

          I actually use the Spanish layout for writing French--at least you can write properly, and has the bonus of not having to hit SHIFT every time you want to type a comma or a period.

          I do find the Linux (KDE at any rate) input methods quite handy. E.g., I can type slavic languages (Latin script) without having to change from my default British layout, although I grant you that it is much slower than using the relevant layout due to extensive use of dead keys.

          1. Potemkine Silver badge

            Re: A keyboard that doesn't support umlauts?

            Keyboard layouts were not made to be fast and practical, on the contrary.... bloody mechanical typewriters, you pwned us for decades

      2. ravenviz Silver badge
        Headmaster

        Re: A keyboard that doesn't support umlauts?

        "Windows has this silly one where you press <Alt>"

        Ahem, I use it all the time it's very useful, I have to type characters in peoples' names from all over Scandinavia and Spanish speaking countries. Plus the maths functions × and ÷ are also quite neat to use in sums in emails.

        Here's my StickyNotes list of ones I use commnly:

        ® 0174 ± 0177

        ™ 0153 Å 0197

        ã 0227 † 0134

        ½ 0189 × 0215

        € 0128 ÷ 0247

        å 134 • 0149

        § 0167 ¾ 0190

        Ø 0216 ¼ 0188

  16. George Nacht
    Happy

    Wow

    Slavic languages can only silently stare in awe. The best we Czechs did was "nejneobhospodarovavatelnejsi" paltry 28 letters, meaning roughly "least suitable for agriculture".

  17. Shaha Alam
    Trollface

    Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe

    3 f's in that word. one after another.

    effing hell.

    1. Nigel 11

      Re: Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe

      I've now got to ask - how do Germans indicate a diaresis, given that the usual method of doing so looks exactly like an umlaut?

      1. Christian Berger

        Re: Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe

        a) If you are using a decent typesetter it'll give you a ligature for the first 2 fs.

        b) We used to have Tremas I think, they were forbidden and now there is no rule on those. I used them on my Diploma thesis.

    2. Christian Berger

      Re: Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe

      Actually we used to have weird laws on when to have 2 and 3 fs.

      For example if you combined Schiff and Fahrt, you used to get Schiffahrt, now with the recent reform you get Schifffahrt.

      However if you combined Sauerstoff and Flasche (oxygen and bottle) you got Sauerstoffflasche under both laws.

      1. Richard 120

        Re: Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe

        I hope the laws aren't enforced by some kind of rechtschreibung Stasi.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Whew! Just when you thought that your Bratwurst was a mouthful!!

    I guess some good does come from the EU after all!

    (Glad I don't have to marketing hack auf Deutsch!!)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whew! Just when you thought that your Bratwurst was a mouthful!!

      My fiancee's parents were German and she loves German advertising for its directness and simplicity. She says all the ads basically say "Buy this, it's really good". Ritter chocolate is a great example: Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut. (Square. Practical. Good.)

  19. DwarfPants
    Black Helicopters

    I have always wondered if antidisestablishmentarianism is a double negative.

    And the welsh also have the village of Login which is nice.

    1. Spleen

      I was about to say 'no it isn't', but you might be right. Does anyone know what exactly would be the difference between an establishmentarianism and an antidisestablishmentarianism?

      Put another way, if you're at a meeting to discuss how to preserve the link between the Church of England and the monarchy, and someone walks in saying "Hi, I'm an establishmentarianism", why would you throw him out?

  20. Frankee Llonnygog

    Does the Danube Steamboat Company ...

    ... stop at Mornington Crescent?

  21. ravenviz Silver badge
    Coat

    Longest English word

    I thought the longest English word was smiles, because there's a mile between...

    (Ok, I've left)

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