h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This comes from Jokerford2000 who just stole the keyboard from Luna(QoH).

I seem to recall that the longest word in the German language is the title of the captain of a boat that runs up
and down a river that I can't seem to remember the name of. My German Prof said that if it was printed out
in standard font size it would span an entire 12 foot university room blackboard. However, he never told us what the word actually was.


Don't know just spouting off
JF2K

I think you may mean:

Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän

were "Donau" ist the River (Vienna) and the rest means (more or less) captain of the steamboat society

AXR

What about the longest word which doesn't consist of other words?? (I don't know the proper term in English...) In Finnish it would be something like this:

Järjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkinköhän

which I can't translate without a dictionary...

Nothing against Strassenbahnendhaltestelle (final street train station stop place) - or Strassenbahnendhaltestellenschild (final street train station stop place sign) or Strassenbahnendhaltestellenschildbefestigung (final street train station stop place sign fortification) or...

very good idea - lets start with one german word and then outclass one another
Schrank.

The longest German word I ever came up with is:
Autobahnbegrenzungspfeilerreflektierlichtsausbessererfahrzeugswerkzeugkastenhenkelaufhängungsschraubengröße.
It is a little story in itself, designating the fact that there is people out there who repair the little orange bits of plastic on road posts that are put there to reflect the spotlights of bypassing cars and thus indicate the edge of the road. The people in question go there in a little orange van and bring their own special toolkit with a handle attached to it by a screw, whose gauge is what this word is driving at.

I remember when this subject popped up in the Daily Mail's Readers' Questions and Answers bit on the coffee break page, just above the 'hilarious' adventures of bred Basset.
As I recall, the longest English word found was the name of some lung disease to do with silicon particles or something. Needless to say the brain cells soring the word itself have long since been categorised 'who cares' and thus were sacrificed to alcohol to save the brain cells that know how to tie shoelaces.
There was a German word as well, which I *think* was Gesundheitswiederherstellungsmittelzusammensmischungsverhältniskündiger, which was apparently used by somebody once for apothecary. Literally it means 'Person who is knowledgeable about the mixing together of health restoring thingies'. Somewhere in the course of history the Germans decided it would be far more sensible to use the term 'Apotheker'. Perhaps this was because calling a shop a Gesundheitswiederherstellungsmittelzusammensmischungsverhältniskündigerei would require a very wide building.
Theoretically though I'm not sure there's a limit to the length of a word in German (or other languages using compound nouns), as you can always add something else. For instance, you could have a Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftsgesundheitswiederherstellungsmittelzusammensmischungsverhältniskündiger, which would be an Apothecary of the Danube Steam Ship Association.
It's reminiscent of childhood arguments of 'I hate you a million times' - 'I hate you a zillion times' - 'I hate you times infinity [smuggly]' - 'I hate you times infinity plus one [triumphuntly]'

I found out about this word too, from my fith grade teacher in a Schoolastic Magazine. The word means a lung disease that a person gets from living near an active volcano. Eventually some people get this disease from the fumes of the volcano. The word has 47 letters add I think this is how you spell it Pneumenultramicroscopicsilicono-volcanoconiosis.

Have you ever tried with "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft". That's a famous "long one" (it's German)

the longest is this :

"epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän"

itäs finnish try to say it. I can!

Did you ever ask the riddle as children "What's the longest word in the world?"
"I dunno!"
"Smiles"
"Why?"
"Because its got a mile between esses"