As Mark Twain said " a word so long it has a perspective". So the longest word to be found in the German dictionary is Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung – "motor vehicle indemnity insurance". A spokeswoman for Duden, publishers of the most extensive German dictionary, said: "For that, it has to be in common parlance, and long words are sometimes simply too uncomfortable." But whatever it is, the word is unlikely to make it into a German-language dictionary. Mecklenburg's agriculture ministry has now issued a nationwide appeal for the new longest word. It took eight years for RkReÜAÜG to be recognised as Germany's longest word, only securing the title when the majestic 67-letter word Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung – "regulation governing the delegation of authority pertaining to land conveyance permissions" – was ditched in November 2007. They compete with lengthy words often found in the chemical industry. "The majority of these really long words are to be found in codes of law," Stefanowitsch added. The term Germans use to refer to such words is itself a compound: Bandwurmwörter, or "tapeworm words".
"It was until now the longest authentic word in German usage," Anatol Stefanowitsch, a Berlin professor of linguistics research told Die Welt. The big question they are asking is which word will now take its place. It was given the abbreviation RkReÜAÜG – which was itself unpronouncable.īut the 63-letter word was deemed no longer necessary after the EU halted BSE-testing on healthy cattle at abattoirs. The word, which means "the law concerning the delegation of duties for the supervision of cattle marking and the labelling of beef", was introduced in 1999 during the BSE crisis.
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