Longest German Word

[TruthSeeker]

What is the longest german word? :D

[draqon]

Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän

[draqon]

its an adress to the steamboat ship on Danube back in WWI era...

[draqon]

Meanwhile yet a longer word is: Rinderkennzeichnungs-und- Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübert ragungsgesetz

which is a name of a law...

[draqon]

imagine this, mother is a lawyer and father is a lawyer...their son little Adalhelm has done a mischief in the school, so as a punishment he must recite the name of the law
"Rinderkennzeichnungs-und- Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübert ragungsgesetz" 20 times in 5 minutes...

could you do that?

[Fraggle Rocker]

German is a derivational-synthetic language, meaning that morphemes can be juxtaposed without strict regard for their grammatical roles. This results in a highly flexible word-building facility, which is limited by the need for the reader/listener to follow the logic of the person or community who coined the word. This contrasts with relational synthesis (as practiced in Italian or Spanish), which requires the connected morphemes to observe their grammatical relationships, and thus makes the compounds easier to understand.

German, therefore, gives rise to words that are coined for specific purposes but may not last long. Look at a collection of Nazi propaganda posters and you'll see hundreds of words that you can more-or-less understand--but not quite--without the context of the era.

My point is that "the longest German word" will probably be different every time you look it up.

And if you think German is difficult to deal with, try Finnish! Last I saw, the longest printed word anyone could find in any language was from a Finnish pilot's manual.

[skaught]

Whats the longest russian word you can think of Draqon?

[Xelios]

German is strange if you come from an english speaking background. Some of my favorites that I've come across so far:

Arbeitslosengeldempfänger - a person who receives unemployment pay

Hochschulzugangsberechtigung - a paper that says you're allowed to study as an undergrad

Höchstgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung - maximum speed limit

The most frustrating part of German though is the articles like "der, die, das, den, dem, des", all of them have specific cases where they're to be used and usually modify whatever word they're for in some way.

[draqon]

Whats the longest russian word you can think of Draqon?

enczifilographicheskiy....enciphilographic...I know there are longer words thou

[skaught]

Uh... I could pronounce it better if it was written in russian alphabet Draqon. And a translation would be awesome as well.

[Atopos]

Finnish is pretty weird and keen on word assembling. This is quite long:

epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän = doubting: not even with his/her ability to not to make a thing unsystematic

And since finnish is a phonetic language, every single letter has to be pronounced.