{"id":4742,"date":"2013-06-04T07:27:36","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T07:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4742"},"modified":"2013-06-04T07:36:08","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T07:36:08","slug":"germany-drops-its-longest-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4742","title":{"rendered":"Germany drops its longest word"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Germany’s longest word, Rindfleischetikettierungs\u00fcberwachungsaufgaben\u00fcbertragungsgesetz – a 63-letter long title of a law regulating the testing of beef, has officially ceased to exist.<\/p>\n

The word – which refers to the “law for the delegation of monitoring beef labelling”, has been repealed by a regional parliament after the EU lifted a recommendation to carry out BSE tests on healthy cattle.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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German is famous for its compound nouns, which frequently become so cumbersome they have to be reduced to abbreviations. The beef labelling law, introduced in 1999 to protect consumers from BSE, was commonly transcribed as the “RkRe\u00dcA\u00dcG”, but even everyday words are shortened to initials so Lastkraftwagen – lorry – becomes Lkw.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Professor Anatol Stefanowitsch, a linguistics expert at the Free University of Berlin, told the German news agency dpa that the beef labelling law was the longest “authentic” word in the German language.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n