When short words are too long

This evening we went to the last summer organ concert in St. Peter and heard Raymond O'Donnell playing Clerambault, Stanford, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Preston, and an encore improvisation on an Irish folk song. Afterward, we met up with the delightful Frau F., a friend of a friend, for drinks. The conversation turned to Twain's essay, and she reminded us that while Germans are always happy to cram words together into ridiculously long compound nouns, they also like abbreviations.

Thus one says:

"StÜPl" (pronounced shteupl) for "Standortuebungsplatz" (the local troop training ground);

"StVZO" (pronounced ess-tay-fow-tzet-oh) for "Strassenverkehrszulassungsordnung" (regulations governing admissibility of components of street vehicles);

"ErzBer" (pronounced ertzbear) for "Erziehungsberechtigter" (a child's guardian);

and KFZ (pronounced kah-eff-ztet) for "Kraftfahrzeug" (motor-powered vehicle).

Careful readers will have noticed that while the first three abbreviations save one a little breath, KFZ is a three-syllable substitution for a modest three-syllable word. But let us not be judgmental: after all, Germans get to say "vay vay vay" rather than "double-U double-U double-U" when they talk about the world wide web.

Traffic-related abbreviations are especially popular. In addition to KFZ, there's also PKW (pronounced pay-kah-vay) for Personenkraftwagen (passenger car), and LKW (pronounced ell-kah-vay) for Lastkraftwagen (truck).

Why say "Personenkraftwagen" rather than the briefer "Auto"? Stefan explains that "Personenkraftwagen" is more formal. Thus, one might read in the newspaper that the robbers escaped "in einem PKW."

We did not get around to abbreviating Donaudampfschifffarhtsgesellschaftskapitaensgattin, but following the StÜPl model, it would probably be something like DoDaSchFaGeKaGa, which has the benefit of actually being pronounceable.

"The Awful German Language"

In 1880, Mark Twain claimed to have spent at least nine weeks trying to learn German. His observations about The Awful German Language are well worth reading. If your life partner is German, read Twain's essay out loud together and then say "I told you so."

Twain himself maintained a museum of ridiculously long German words. Topping his list: Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. According to one website, the current record for a legitimate German word is held by the 67-letter compound noun Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungs-zuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung.

Thanks y'all

Sehr Geehrte Leserinnen und Leser ("very honorable readeresses and readers"):

Thanks for all the feedback on the blog, both via comments and via email. Blogger.com refuses to let me respond to comments with comments at the moment, so here's a full-fledged entry to catch up on issues/questions/concerns you've raised, for all you enquiring minds who want to know. In no particular order:

A zip line is a pulley, sometimes with a seat attached, suspended on a wire cable on an incline.

Thanks, Teofrastus, for contributing the Spanish word hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliofobia (fear of long words), which measures in at a delightfully ironic 35 letters (assuming I counted correctly). Helen says we left "Gesellschaft" (company) out of Donaudampfshifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaensgattin, which would bring that word up to 49 letters. I pointed out to her that "Starnbergersee" has nine more letters than "Donau," but she objected that there isn't a steamboat company on the Starnbergersee. There is one on the Danube--so we're not just goofing around making up words here.

No, I'm not having too much fun in Germany. Being a cultural ambassador is hard work.

Ah, the platform in the toilet bowl--the #1 comment-generating topic to date! What to say.... According to Freud, a child's first gift to its parents is poop (a child who withholds such gifts is anal-retentive; and note the delighted fuss parents make over successful potty-training). The platform offers toilet bowl users the opportunity to admire, shall we say, the fruits of their labor well into adulthood. By the way, when doing routine cleaning, it is a bad idea to drizzle liquid hand soap on the platform, though the bubbles you get after flushing are mighty impressive.

Never fear, there are Beethoven and Mozart streets in Freiburg.

On the lack of a Mendelssohnstrasse: There's one in Basel and one in Offenburg, so it isn't a regional thing. I'm guessing the composer street names in the Freiburg 'burb date from the 1930s--big years for German Nationalism. A few years after Mendelssohn's untimely death in 1847, Wagner published an anonymous, remarkably anti-Semitic article on "Judaism in Music," claiming that Jews just can't write anything good and criticizing Mendelssohn's music as underdeveloped and derivative (and Heinrich Heine's poetry as false and inauthentic). So an intersection between Mendelssohnstr. and Richard-Wagner-Str. truly would have been sweet to see.

Stefan is a German citizen; Elias and I are American citizens. Stefan hasn't voted in an election since he moved to the U.S. in 1989. If he gets his act together, he'll vote this fall. We're here until the end of December.

Yes indeed, people rabidly guard their Restmuell bin space. Observe this bin, photographed this evening in the Altstadt. Know what the red doohickey on top is? That's right, it's a lock. I did manage to find a Restmuell bin without a lock downtown this afternoon (not that I would ever, ever sneak my own trash into someone else's bin, of course).

When we're back in the U.S., we'll have to invite all of Elias's java-drinking buddies over for Kuchen and decaf.

Scoping out the 'hood

Today in a brochure about kids' summer camps, I read a word even longer than Hochsicherheitsgefangene: Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz. A whopping 27 letters to say "asylum seekers' monetary aid." I don't expect to have many opportunities to incorporate that into conversation (compared to the ever-practical Hochsicherheitsgefangene), but it's nice to have another specimen for the Museum of Impressively Long German Words--a phrase, incidentally, that Stefan says you can't effectively translate as a single word. Also in the museum is German's answer to "antidisestablishmentarianism": "Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitaensgattin" ("Danube steamboat captain's wife").

We saw our future apartment for the first time today. Grungy from the outside, but quite nice from the inside. Special bonus: an upright piano! The apartment is furnished and, to our relief, fully equipped with towels, dishes, etc. There's enough room to accommodate visitors, so start booking those airplane tickets. We move in August 1.

Saying Elias' school is right around the corner makes the school sound farther away than it is. Elias will have to walk out the front door, head left a few meters, then turn left into the schoolyard behind our apartment building. In addition to the school, there are two bakeries, two pharmacies, a grocery store, a farmers' market, and a hardcore bicycle shop within two blocks of the apartment building, plus the Stadt Garten (I was corrected today for calling it the Stadt Park) less than a kilometer away. We've clearly lucked out.