"Frank Slootweg" wrote in message
...
NY wrote:
[...]
I remember learning German compound words such as Luftkissenfahrzeug
(hovercraft - "air cushion travel thing") and Fernsehapparat (TV - "far
see
apparatus"). My grandpa was a member of a model railway society and they
had
dealings with a similar society in Germany. They sent my grandpa (who was
editor of his society's newsletter) a ****-take of their own language, as
a
story in "German" with English translation. The word that they translated
as
"cab" was "Herrlokomotivdirektordonnerundblitzenhaus". So Germans *do*
have
a sense of humour after all.

You mean like:

Leichtmetallhochdrukdampfkochkesselmitautomatische mshreianlage

(kettle with a whistle)

Eisenbahnknotenpunkthinundhersteller

(the person who changes the switches in a railway track)

Ineinemverdecktenkastenaufgestellte....

(Can't remember the rest, but it's a souffleur in a theatre.)

No, I'm *not* German! :-)

I've often thought that it must make a typesetter's job a nightmare,
especially when full-justifying text in narrow newspaper columns ;-) The
first one would take several lines of hyphenated text.

I'm sure a lot of the longest ones are not in common use. I was rather
miffed, after learning Luftkissenfahrzeug, to discover that Germans usually
use das Hovercraft.


I remember many years ago in an edition of the Guinness Book of Records,
under the section "longest word", that the record was a Fijiian word which
translated as "Father-in-law, don't look now, I'm bending over". It is their
word for... mini-skirt ;-) Yeah, right. I'm sure it is.