Our latest work in German class has been the famous compound nouns. We think it's hilarious that Germans jam words together into huge compounds.

According to our professor, a native Austrian, German-speakers think it's funny too. It's a game for both children and adults, to come up with the longest parsable word. For adults, it's sort of a party game, where each person in a circle has to add another segment onto the head of the word; the loser is the first that forgets part of the enormously unwieldy word that results. Sort of like "Antidisestablishmentarianism," but much more complex.

Anyway, there is also a game to make the worst possible tongue-twisting agglutination. The exemplar is the following monstrosity (although it can be further extended): "Die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel," which translates as "'Bärbel' [the name of] the bartender at the bar [that serves] the beer [prefered by] the barber [that cuts] the beards of the barbarians [that frequent] Barbara's Rhubarb [-serving] Bar."

Pronouncing that mouthful takes we students a significant length of time. But here's a German video that makes everything crystal clear:

Posted by: Boviate at 06:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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