What’s up with those long German words?
There are a lot of changes happening this time of year — leaves are falling, pumpkin spice lattes make their return, some of us are still watching baseball. October is behind us, as is Oktoberfest. Except…wait…Oktoberfest mainly happens in September. Or at least in any other year it would have happened in September and wrapped up the first weekend of October. But due to the pandemic, there was no official Oktoberfest in 2021 — the next one is scheduled for September 17 — October 3, 2022.
While Oktoberfest could only be celebrated virtually this year, we can still take a moment to celebrate long German words. While they may seem made up, they are technically correct according to the rules of German word formation. As highlighted in this Wikipedia article, the longest official published word in Germany (as from the Guinness Book of World Records in 1972) is:
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
which clocks in at 79 letters, and is defined as “Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Maintenance Building of the Danube Steam Shipping Electrical Services,” an organization which may not have actually existed, but served its purpose to demonstrate how a long word could be created.
I wanted to find out more about how this is possible, so I asked my father, Harry Liedtke, who was born and raised in Germany (and who did not move to the United States until he was in his 20s) how this works. Here is what he wrote:
There actually is a law in Germany which is recorded as:
Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz
When you write this in German, the name of this law has 79 letters. There are two Umlauts in the name of this law; when writing this in English it results in 81 letters.
Following the system I referred to in our Zoom call (we have a weekly family Zoom), one can add the title of the person who is in charge of modifying this law when changes in the law happen — you simply add these letters following the letters shown above:
aktualisierungsverwalter
This adds another 24 letters to the word. Of course, no one in his right mind would actually write or speak this word, but it is grammatically correct.
If this person has an assistant, you add the letters:
assistent
adding another 9 letters. If this person in turn has a helper, the word turns into:
assistentengehilfe
increasing the total by yet another 9 letters. If this helper requires special glasses to protect his eyes to do his work, you first add the letter “n” plus the name of the special eye protection gizmo:
naugenschutzeinrichtung
adding yet another 23 letters. If this protective device comes in a container, let’s say a rigid box, you add:
festkartonagenbehaelter
adding another 23 letters.
We had fun with this in school. I remember creating a word in school that was longer than that. It described the machine adding the buttonhole to the special holiday uniform worn by a fast Intercity train conductor supervisor.
If my math and interpretation of my father’s explanation is correct, I come up with the 169-letter word:
Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetzaktualisierungsverwalterassistentengehilfenaugenschutzeinrichtungfestkartonagenbehaelter
[Note: any errors in spelling or definitions are all mine as I do not speak German myself.]
The most amazing piece of this is when I paste this into Google Translate, the following definition is returned: “Beef identification meat labeling supervision tasks transfer law update manager assistant assistant eye protection device solid cardboard box container.” So while the definition itself may be a little awkward, it’s actually enough to be translated into something.
If you are interested in finding more long German words, I highly recommend the twitter account @longgermanwords — this account highlights long words, both real and made-up (but still grammatically correct!)
And since pronouncing these words is much more challenging than building and writing them, I will just say Prost! Hope you had a happy and safe Oktoberfest, wherever you virtually celebrated it. And maybe next year you can practice creating long German words in real life during Oktoberfest.
