2013-07-24, 09:57 AM
Marksman Bryan Wrote:German tends to string words together much more frequently than other languages. The example I was taught was Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, which simply means a captain of a boat on the Danube river. Or something like that.
Oh, if you just knew Finnish you would know that long words are no strange thing here. In Finnish there's hardly any prepositions and most of the particles are found at the end of word. e.g. basic form epäjärjestelmällinen (unsystematic) could be epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän (roughly translated: not even with his/her ability to be unsystematic) in a bent form. Although there's hardly any case for that to be used, it's grammatically correct. Not to mention, that's leaving out compound words, which in Finnish are written without spaces. In other words there's technically no limit on how long a word can be:
Kumarreksituteskenteleentuvaisehkollaismaisekkuudellisenneskenteluttelemattomammuuksissansakaankopahan
Mustavalkotäplähylkeennahkasaapasrasvatahnarasiakannessanikaan
lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilaistansakaan
yhdeksänkymmentäkahdeksansataatriljoonaaviisisataakuusikymmentäyksimiljoonaakahdeksansataayhdeksänkymmentäyhdeksäntuhattaviisikymmentäkolmesataakaksikymmentäneljä
and so on

It's just that German is hard to pronounce for me. Although to be honest, I still have problems with some English words too. I'm not used to words being pronounced completely different from the written form.

