Shadow

Oberammergaueralpenkr�uterdelikatessenfr�hst�cksk�se
Fussballweltmeisterschaftsqualifikationsspiel Vierwaldstaetterseedampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftsoberkapit�n
Fussballweltmeisterschaftsqualifikationsspiel

If that’s not long enough for you, try:
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenskajuetenklinenputzergehilfe or
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenskajuetenschluesselloch

This was in the Chicago Tribune’s business section (May 23, 1995):
The Danube steamship company, once the world’s largest riverboat operator, sank into bankruptcy Monday after Austria decided it could no longer afford to keep it afloat. However, the company’s tongue-twisting name, Donaudampfschifahrtsgesellschaftkapitaen, the longest word in the German language, is sure of a place in linguistic legend.

One can somewhat lengthen that reputed “longest word in the German language” by making reference to the captain’s wife, instead of the captain himself…

You can go ad nauseam on this word, of course. Just add the crisis affecting the life insurance company that takes care of the widows and orphans of those deceased captains and you can add to the German:

-hinterbliebenenlebensversicherungsgesellschaftskrise

Of course it’s not the longest word. You can make up one longer if you try, which I won’t. Besides, the Donau… is very specific and not all that common in everyday parlance. Which brings me to an interesting but not very profound question: which common word in German is, under normal orthographic conditions, one of the longest? One candidate that comes to mind readily is
Bundesausbildungsfoerderungsgesetz
which every German student knows as BAFoeG.

Here is an opposite observation. There are a number of Autokennzeichen which are words: ER, ES, IN, OB, DA, DU, AB, AN, SO usw. Again, not profound, just short.
CJJ

The replies by A,B and C already suggest a point of elementary linguistics: there is no longest word, by definition, because any word you can make can be made longer. That is because the rules for word formation in German (as in English) allow for addition of new elements. Words get more and more implausible (e.g. if I were to propose adding a cover to the Danube Steamship Company captain’s cabin’s keyhole), but they are not automatically ungrammatical. It is usually possible to construe contexts for some pretty extreme examples. A further commonplace of linguistic analysis is that most of these words that get long in German are also words in English, but words whose elements happen to be written separately in English orthography. One test is the addition of the ’s possessive ending, though this can lead to some pretty weird words. Here is one allegedly heard by a linguist as reported to the graduate students in his class: “The girl I used to go out with’s car.”

German writes numbers up to one million as one word:
neunhundertneunundneunzigtausendneunhundertneunundneunzig

I don’t know if it’s the longest word in German — with German’s ability to form new compound words, that concept may turn out to be an illusion — but the word “Rheininundationskollektenkasse” has the distinction of filling an entire iambic pentameter line of verse in Kleist’s *Der zerbrochene Krug*.

Wohnraummodernisierungssicherungsgesetz

Bezeichnung eines Gesetzes, mit dem der Hauskauf w�hrend der Modrow-Zeit in der DDR legalisiert werden soll. Das Gesetz wurde am Donnerstag im Bundestag debattiert. (from today’s taz March 23, 1997)
http://www.taz.de/~taz/970322.taz/a2_T970322.15.html

It should be obvious that there is no such thing as the longest word in German, because
(1) there is no set list of words, and
(2) words can be made up as one wishes.
To any alleged ‘longest word’, such as the one above, appendages can be added ad infinitum, so that no word can be called the longest. English is actually no different, except that the bits of the long word are still written as if they were separate entities: We could (and do) just as well say in English: Danube steamship captains’ widows insurance agency, etc.

English is somewhat limited in that regard, and we’re stuck with monstrosities like “antidisestablishmentarianism” (a long-time favorite having to do with with setting up/getting rid of an official church in Scotland)) and some compound based on “hemidemisemiquaver” describing an acoustic interval.

More Vocab items from the Institut fuer Deutsche Sprache

Send me more of these torturous words!

Return to Vocabulary page.