“Word sausages”

Wortwuerste

I have to admit I’ve never quite understood the look of sheer horror on most British people’s faces when they first encounter a seemingly endless German compound word and try to make sense of it.

As a German and a linguist these words make total sense to me – all you need is a bit of time to break them down into their individual components ­­and off you go. I’ve seen it many times when teaching German – that look of exasperation tinged with a certain degree of admiration – “How can you even begin to read this?” I’ve always maintained it makes perfect sense and is perfectly logical once you understand the individual components (and, yes, have maybe a certain amount of familiarity and experience with the whole concept of sticking words together).

In addition to artificially inflated compound words such as the world famous – and fabulous – Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitänskajüte (does it really exist?) there are also the ones that we actually use, particularly favoured by the legal, banking and insurance industries, which as Germans we never bat an eyelid about. Examples include the widely publicised “Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften” (definition: insurance companies providing legal protection) – a mere 39 characters – or even common ones in everyday use such as “Höchstgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung” (definition: maximum speed limit) – a dinker of a word with only 32 characters!

This recent letter from my own bank, however, made me do a double, triple and quadruple take. Apart from the two whoppers (which my linguist friend Marion calls “Wortwürste” = “word sausages”), the whole thing is littered with what I would describe as medium length words like “Abbuchungslastschriften”, “Lastschriftverkehr”, “Einzugsermächtigungen” etc. But it is “Abbuchungsauftragslastschriftverfahren” (standing order advice mandate) – 38 characters – and “Einzugsermächtigungslastschriftverfahren” (direct debit advice mandate) – 40 characters – that really take the biscuit.

Don’t you just love the German language for being able to express in one word what other languages can take nearly a sentence over – you just need so many more letters in Scrabble!