Name: How long can a German word get?
Uploaded: 2013-12-09T20:58:11.000Z
Duration: 2 min 44 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In May 2013, newspapers all over the world reported

The superlative

in the title of a state law in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

how did the German language manage to lose it?

The law was repealed, but the word continues to exist:

And how else are history teachers of the future supposed to talk about

But by that logic, it was only the longest word until 2003,

The law was repealed in 2007, but again, the word still exists.

But what of the word listed in many editions of the Guinness Book of Records?

Unfortunately, that word doesn’t count.

Because it was never actually used for anything.

It’s supposedly the name of an association,

But nobody can find any evidence that this association ever existed.

That seems to have been invented for some kind of advertising campaign,

but any sane German simply calls it an...

are not words that anyone would use in general conversation.

so although they’re words, they’re not very useful words

unless they’re written down in legal documents.

and even then, it’s more usual to use the official abbreviations.

Although it is common to make new words in German

simply by jamming together shorter words,

Make a word too long, and even Germans get lost.

In any case, the German language does have other techniques it can use as well;

listed as the longest word in common usage:

but even that’s a bit much for most Germans.