The German language is not inferior to any other European language in the rating of studies. This language is spoken in several states, and representatives of the language group have made a tangible cultural contribution to the wealth of world art.
Language family
Scientists attribute the German language to the Indo-European group of languages, namely to the Romano-Germanic branch. In addition to this language, this classification also includes English and French. These languages have a lot in common, starting from similar roots of words and ending with phonetic sound.
Word formation methods
The German language is known for its complexity in the formation of grammatical forms and phrases. Indeed, unlike English, in the German language there are grammatical categories of declension and conjugation, changes in nouns by gender and numbers, which requires a lot of effort from the student to remember all the subtleties of the formation of words in a sentence.
Unfortunately, scientists did not study the features of German word formation in detail, since this branch of science did not acquire a large number of admirers. But many linguists are interested in the matter. German is a fairly structured language in which each element of the sentence must stand in a certain place. But, unlike the English language, there are a few more rules for using words.
The longest word in German
Word formation is a particularly interesting phenomenon in the language. Most of the vocabulary of the German language is formed by compounding, that is, a combination of several foundations of words into a single new lexical formation. Under such a rule, the longest word in the German language - Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, which means "law on the control of freshness of beef". A sufficient number of words formed in this way, but, as a rule, they are not so long. How many letters are in the longest word in German? A total of 63 letters!
To see the way of education, it is necessary to divide the word into the basics, which make up a single statement:
- rind - cattle;
- fleisch - meat as a food product;
- etikettierungs - labeling, labeling;
- überwachungs - control, observation;
- aufgaben - tasks, assignments;
- übertragungs - transference, infection;
- gesetz is the law.
It is surprising that the longest word in the German language is related to the legal sphere of activity, because Germany is famous for its clarity and scrupulousness in fulfilling the prescribed norms.
The formation of new words can occur according to different patterns. For example, adding roots or suffixes to form a new word. Thus , the longest word in German consists of 10 bases or 7 words. It is worth noting that the educated word includes parts that also exist due to this method of education.
Phrases metamorphoses
In 2013, the government repealed the Beef Freshness Labeling Act. This means that the word rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz can be considered archaism, since after the cancellation of the prescription, the use of the word has sunk into oblivion. New came to replace - donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänswitwe. To correctly pronounce words of this length, you need to break them into components:
- Donau - river Danube;
- dampf - steam;
- schiff - ship;
- fahrtsgesellschafts - shipping company;
- kapitäns - captain owned by the captain;
- witwe is a widow.
After compiling the meanings of the foundations, the meaning of the 48-letter word becomes obvious - the widow of the captain of the Danube shipping association.
Linguists involved in the study of such a phenomenon say that it is not difficult to come up with a word from several cohesive foundations, but difficulties arise in pronouncing such tokens. As an example, scientists suggest the neologism introduced by them - rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetzesentwurfsdebattierklub-diskussionsstandsberichterstattungsgeldantragsformular. The word consists of 140 letters and means a form for receiving money after providing a report on the status of discussions of the bill on the distribution of responsibilities for the supervision of beef labeling. With this experiment, scientists confirmed that there is no need for such long words, and the use of such words in everyday speech is not required.