The Germans are famous for many things; fine motors cars and excellent sausage, for example. But it`s their fondness for multisyllabic, compound words that holds the most fascination for linguists. In fact, the Germans have even cheekily created their own compound word to describe compound words: bandwurmwörter. It means "tapeworm words."
Now, it would seem one of the longest words ever strung together in German is being tossed – not because it’s unpronounceable, which it most definitely is for non-Germanic speakers, but because it's simply obsolete.
Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is a term given to a 1999 law that regulated the testing and labelling of beef.
In a close-to-literal translation, in English the term means, “Beef labelling supervision duties delegation law” and was coined following the BSE-mad cow scare. While it wasn’t found in any German dictionaries, the term was used in official government documents.
The 63-letter word was such a mouthful that it had to be shortened to RkReÜAÜG – easier to type, perhaps, but no more pronounceable.
Now, the German Press Agency dpa reports that a regional parliament has repealed the beef labelling law, following the lifting of a European Union recommendation. So Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is old news.
Now the search is on for the next longest German word.
The longest word in the standard German dictionary is Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung – which is the word for motor vehicle liability insurance. But at 36 letters, it’s rather puny. Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften, a touch longer at 39 letters, is the language’s longest non-dictionary word. It means “an insurance company that provides legal protection.”
At 80 letters, the longest word ever composed in German is "Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft," meaning, the "Association for Subordinate Officials of the Head Office Management of the Danube Steamboat Electrical Services." But it’s a coinage of strung together more for fun than necessity and it's not found in any dictionary.
The longest standard German dictionary word is Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung – meaning motor vehicle liability insurance. But at 36 letters, it’s rather puny.
As for English we have a few hypersyllabic words of our own. But there are disputes over whether technical words, which are usually “mashups” of smaller terms, should qualify.
The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of fine particles from a volcano. But some say that word shouldn’t count, since it was deliberately coined to be the longest word in English.
Floccinaucinihilipilification is the longest non-technical word in major dictionaries, but again, it was deliberately coined. Antidisestablishmentarianism, at 28 letters, is the longest accepted non-technical, non-coined word. It refers to the ideology that opposes disestablishment or the separation of church and state.
And once in a while, it appears in contexts for its actual meaning, not just in discussions about English's longest words.
