Talk:Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft

Message from ze German

I am from Vienna Austria and a native German speaker and word is really difficult to understand, however it represents a nice peace of officialdom and naming schemes in the old Austrian Empire (don't be sad, officialdom still prospers in current day's Austria).

Nevertheless, the word and its spelling is correct. (Antares911 and me have independently looked it up in several issues of the Guinness Book of World Records.

While the Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft is rather unknown, the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft DDSG (Danube Steamboat Shipping Company) is a well known example of long words. Be sure not to mix up Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft with Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft. There is a separate page regarding only DDSG.

Another long German word is Kontaktlinsenaufbewahrungsflüssigkeit, meaning "contact lens storage liquid". /Yvwv 00:10, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Is "Kontaktlinsenaufbewahrungsflüssigkeit" really any more a single word than "contact lens storage liquid"? The English translation is a string of nouns just like the German word, the difference is that German orthographic convention requires strings of nouns to be written without spaces between each word. "Danube steamboat electrical services head office management subordinate officials association" is an alternative and analogously constructed translation of Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft. The difficulty, perhaps, in reading this translation is not that it's unnatural English but that it's monstrously elaborate. 99.21.180.23 (talk) 03:26, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

No, it's obviously not more than that, but it (Kontaktlinsenaufbewahrungsflüssigkeit) is a single word - which "contact lens storage liquid" clearly is not. That's all the difference. Zero Thrust (talk) 12:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The German word could be written Kontakt Linsen Aufbewahrungs Flüssigkeit, but German conventionally writes compounds without spaces. The English word could be written contactlensstorageliquid, but English doesn't conventionally write long compounds like that. This isn't a matter of German having considerably longer words than English but only of German having different formatting conventions. 75.132.142.26 (talk) 21:55, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

No. Kontakt Linsen Aufbewahrungs Flüssigkeit makes absolutely no sense and is totally wrong in german. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.172.237.161 (talk) 15:27, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

He didn't say it's correct, he said that it could be written as such if German compound nouns were not conventionally spelled as if they were a single word (visually, they are). Peter238 (talk) 17:36, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm also a native German speaker from Vienna and this word doesn't sound idiomatic to me ("...elektrizitäten..." and "...werkbau..." should be "...elektrizitäts..." and "...werksbau..." respectively). Possibly because the word is (allegedly) over a 100 years old and the rules for forming composites have changes since then, but frankly, I get strong "fake German word made up by a native English speaker" vibes on this. I'd really like to see the original source (the Guinness book doesn't count since it just claims that the word exists). Ligneus (talk) 05:51, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Trying to read that word hurt my head. What inspires a person to create such a word that cannot be written easyly? Props to the creator of the article--Doom Child 04:18, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

English translation

The current version gives the association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services as English translation of Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft. Is this correct? Donaudampfschiffahrt is translated as the Danube Steamship Company so isn't it something like the Danube Steamship Company electricities headquarters ... lower officers' association? I cannot translate werkbau well. - TAKASUGI Shinji 09:43, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I asked a German language linguist and got the answer. It's the Danube Steamship Company electricities main factory | assembly lower officials' association. Since DDSG was a public company, assembly workers were called assembly lower officials. - TAKASUGI Shinji 02:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Merge?

Perhaps this page should be merged with Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz to create a "German compound words" article. - Phi*n!x 22:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This article explains the German compound, not the organization itself. - TAKASUGI Shinji 02:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The article should explain the organisation itself. Gerrit ^CUTEDH 16:26, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Disagree with merge, but agree with creating a "long German words" page or whatever.--Liface 17:53, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Gerrit that the article would ideally discuss the organization itself. However, only the first paragraph does so, so maybe it should be left as a stub and the rest go to a German compounds article. See my posting on the other talk page.Phi*n!x 16:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Pre-war

Which war? --Stlemur 18:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

WWI, of course. There was no Empire after that and the time between WWI and WWII would be called between-war anyway. 78.142.136.20 (talk) 11:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Term

This seems to be the kind of term only a competitive German free-diver could pronounce. Rintrah 05:58, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

You'd be amazed what kind of words some non-Indogermanic languages have. Trust me, ours are not even among the runner-ups. —Nightstallion (?) 15:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Why stop there?

Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft doesn't particularly impressive me. How about Donaudampfschiffskapitänswitwensversicherungsgesellschaftjubiläumfeierwillkommensansprachevorbereitungstermintagesordnungpunktbestätigung (Donau steam ship capitains' widow insurance company anniversary celebration speech preparation meeting agenda point confirmation). I could go on, but I think you get the idea :-)

--Philopedia 14:33, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I am a native german Speaker and I must say your "Word" ist wrong written and makes no sense. The "correct" written version would be: Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitänswitwensversicherungsgesellschaftsjubiläumsfeierwillkommensansprachenvorbereitungstermintagesordnungspunktbestätigung.

But it is silly. Who need to confirm a point on an Agenda of a "Vorbereitungstermin"? And why a insurance company only for captains widows? :-) --Lkl ★ 19:38, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Orthography changes

If I remember correct, the 1996 reform requires all the letters in a compound to be written thus allow 3 identical constant clusters, this means that the 'schiffahrt' part should be 'schifffahrt'. This should be edited. -- Mulder1982 (talk) 16:52, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, just noticed the final paragraph! So scratch my comment just now! My bad!!! -- Mulder1982 (talk) 16:54, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Sources?

Maybe one should add sources for this corporation. There have to be documents somewhere in Austria or in Germany. But as far as I know, the only known source for the existence of this corporation is the travel account "A Tramp Abroad" by Mark Twain. Which, I think, does not qualify as reliable source in wikipedia.88.67.69.78 (talk) 01:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

main article name

The German wikipedia lists the word only as a variation of "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän". While the DDSG-subunit has NO historic reference (outside of the Guinuess books) the word for the DDSG-captain is references in a song from 1936. And well, even as DDSG-captain it is the longest word that had been practically used, so the idea of the article is not changed when the article would be renamed. ;) ... Guidod (talk) 14:27, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Restructure

Hello, Rebestalic here.

The German language is a hobby of mine, and it was imminent that this word would come to my knowledge at one point.

However, the article for this word deviates from its title; I am worried about this. I would like a consensus as soon as possible on whether you are happy for me to start restructuring the article, so I can start without any hassle. I have inserted a warning template.

Danke schön, Rebestalic (talk) 03:44, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

This is extremely vague and impossible to comment on, but yes this is Wikipedia so you are welcome to improve the article. Breaking it into two expandable sections would make sense: one for the association and its history and one for the linguistic aspect, but whatever you think is best I suppose. Reywas92^Talk 06:50, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Sound file

Hello, Rebestalic here.

The sound file for the pronunciation of Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft is no longer visible in the "article" view. When in "edit" mode, the "audio" template is still there. I'm trying to fix this issue; could I have some help please?

Thank you, Rebestalic (talk) 08:36, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Cheers Nardog:)

Rebestalic (talk) 08:31, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Spelling issue

Hello, Rebestalic here again.

Recently an unregistered user with IP adress 188.74.109.115 changed all mentions of Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft to conform with the spelling conventions of after the 1996 German Spelling Reform. The difference was an extra 'f' after "schiff", resulting in "schifffahrt" instead of "schiffahrt". The article says that since Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft is a historic term, the old spelling is kept. Should I change the spelling to the historic version or should I keep as is?

Thank you, Rebestalic (talk) 21:14, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

In any case, the current article title has only two "f"s in a row... AnonMoos (talk) 21:51, 23 October 2018 (UTC)