Good bye Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebe rtragungsgesetz.

zahratustra

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The German language has lost its longest word thanks to a change in the law to conform with EU regulations.

Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz - meaning "law delegating beef label monitoring" - was introduced in 1999 in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22762040
 
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Mark Twain said:
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape — but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere — so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.

Thank you that was a very enjoyable read from Mr. Twain I thought this summarized it best.
 
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Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftkapitänsmützenabzeichen!

Edit: Lol, it gets autocorrected into two words! :rotfl:
 
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Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz - shortened as RkReÜAÜG

Besides, the local press lists a few similar "word monsters" :

- Bundesverkehrswegeplanungsbeschleunigungsgesetz
- Steuerentlastungsvorgesprächskoalitionsrundenvereinbarung (not a law)
- Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung (gone 2007)

The *complete* form of this law is - according to the local press - even this :

"Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischettikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz"

GhanBuriGhan's example is, by the way, a well known word which especially young pupils use when they are looking for extraordinarily long words. ;)
 
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Unlike many other languages you have to speak nearly every letter of a word in high German.
The articulation of the letters is the old latin standard - no problem :)

Take the English word "thought" what you really speak is something like "ssoot".

In the German word "Gedanke" every letter has to be spoken.
 
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I know my German is quite rusty, but I don't think that' entirely true.

"ch" or "sch" in German is a bit like "th" in English. And "st" in German is pronounced "cht".
You pronounce thought not with an s, but with a th sound, which is written as θ phoneme.

Germanic origins [edit]
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had no dental fricatives, but these evolved in the earliest stages of the Germanic languages. In Proto-Germanic, /ð/ and /θ/ were separate phonemes, usually represented in Germanic studies by the symbols *đ and *þ.

*đ (/ð/) was derived by Grimm's law from PIE *dʰ or by Verner's law (i.e. when immediately following an unstressed syllable) from PIE *t.
*þ (/θ/) was derived by Grimm's law from PIE *t.
In West Germanic, the Proto-Germanic *đ shifted further to *d, leaving only one dental fricative phoneme. However, a new [ð] appeared as an allophone of /θ/ in medial positions by assimilation of the voicing of the surrounding vowels. [θ] remained in initial and presumably in final positions (though this is uncertain as later terminal devoicing would in any case have eliminated the evidence of final [ð]). This West Germanic phoneme, complete with its distribution of allophones, survived into Old English. In German and Dutch, it shifted to a /d/, the allophonic distinction simply being lost. In German, West Germanic *d shifted to /t/ in what may be thought of as a chain shift, but in Dutch, *þ, *đ and *d merged into a single /d/.


So it's also the Germans' fault it exists :p
 
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There are 3 "ch" in German language :

1. Is pronounced like in "Loch Ness", I once read
2. Is pronounced like … a bit like the "ch" in "attach", but without the spoken (as I learned it) second "t" (attatch") - or like in Margaret Thatcher, the British "Iron Lady".
3. Is pronounced like a soft "k" (almost only non-German words).

The English "th" has indeed died out in German language. But in early medieval documents, its letter ð still exists. As far as I know.

And last : German "sch" is exactly pronounced like English "sh" (compare "school" with "Schule") for that ;) ).
 
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Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftkapitänsmützenabzeichen!

Edit: Lol, it gets autocorrected into two words! :rotfl:

Of course it gets autocorrected. You forgot an 's' in the middle. ;)

And let's not even talk about the number of 'f's. This changed every other year.
 
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I never managed to keep track of our spelling reform and the reform of the reform. But whatever the current rule is, tripple fff's just look great in the context of this thread. :)
 
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The English "th" has indeed died out in German language. But in early medieval documents, its letter ð still exists. As far as I know.

The German "scharfes s" = ß is very similar to the english th

For example in "Fleiß" (diligence)
 
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The German "scharfes s" = ß is very similar to the english th

For example in "Fleiß" (diligence)
No, the English "th" is different from the German "ß". In fact, the English "th" is the same as the Spanish "z" (although in Latin-America it is pronounced as "s").

A simple search in Youtube shows the pronunciation of both sounds: ß, th.

This reminds me of a funny German commercial where they make a joke about the stereotypical German pronunciation of the English language.
 
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okay - "th" is a "ß" or z with sticking the tongue out :p - we don't do this in Germany :)

Ze grazy Germanz … ;)
 
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okay - "th" is a "ß" or z with sticking the tongue out :p - we don't do this in Germany :)
Yep, it is all about the tongue :).

Well, now you know how to pronounce "Darth Vader" correctly :).
Ze grazy Germanz … ;)
Well, in Spanish the "v" is pronounced as a "b" so people here say "Darth Bader".

I guess that some "grazinezz" is present in all of us in one form or another :).
 
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The German "scharfes s" = ß is very similar to the english th

For example in "Fleiß" (diligence)

Hehe, no. Thats rather the #1 mistake that Germans make. Th is very hard for us.
 
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This is an interesting article regarding early northern European words and names : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Háma

According to the Þiðrekssaga, Heime was originally named Studas and named so after his father.

There you have 2 letters which evolved into what is today the English "th", but one of both got liost in the course of time ( the ð ). Only the Þ remained in English language and evolved into the th, as far as I know.
Tolkien sometimes used the ð in the form of an an "dh" in some of his texts, if I remember correctly (Quenya languge)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Modern_English
There you also learn why in some RPGs there is "Ye olde shoppe". ;)
 
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