It’s probably been more than 15 years since I spoke — very badly, of course — Dutch. Still, one of the things that stuck with me are how incredibly long some words can get in that language. Ones I remember from taking Dutch classes in High School are:
hottentottententententoonstellingsmakersopleidingsprogramma
randjongerenhangplekkenbeleidsambtenarensalarisbesprekingsafspraken
I think I may have crashed a babelfish server when I put the first one in. So, I googled “Longest word in Dutch” (Honestly, with as bad as I am at proofreading my posts, sometimes, you think I could actually remember how to spell both of those?) And, I ended up on a forum titled “Longest Thinkable Word in Your Language.” There, a guy named sander writes:
-randjongerenhangplekkenbeleidsambtenarensalarisbesprekingsafspraken
=
the agreements for the negotiations concerning the salary of public servants who decide on the policy for areas where unemployed youth is allowed to hang out.-hottentottententententoonstellingsmakersopleidingsprogramma
=
the curriculum of an education teaching the makers of exhibitions about the tents of the Hottentots.
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(the last one is a joke bye the way,but the exhibition about the tents of hottentots was real.)
If you stick the H-word into google, you come up with this explanation of Dutch grammar:
Like all other continental West Germanic languages, Dutch has a rather complicated word order that is markedly different from English, which presents a problem for Anglophones learning Dutch. Dutch, like German and Norwegian, is also known for its ability to glue words together to form very long words. Examples of this are de randjongerenhangplekkenbeleidsambtenarensalarisbesprekingsafspraken (the agreements for the negotiations concerning the salary of public servants who decide on the policy for areas where unemployed youth is allowed to hang out), hottentottententententoonstellingsmakersopleidingsprogramma (the curriculum of an education teaching the makers of exhibitions about the tents of the Hottentots), and a number with dozens of digits can be written out as one word. Though grammatically correct, it is never done to this extent; at most two or three words are glued together.
Strange Latitudes 