The Law on Correct Labeling of Beef, adopted in 1999 – on the eve of the mad cow disease epidemic that broke out a few years later – to protect consumers from BSE, was repealed not at all because it gave birth to a monster word. Henceforth, at the insistence of the European Commission, testing of healthy cows for BSE will cease to be mandatory, and accordingly, the need for the existence of a law consisting of just six paragraphs that regulated meat inspection and gave instructions to sellers has disappeared. The law, as reported by the press service of the Schwerin Ministry of Agriculture, will be replaced by a new set of regulations, among which there will no longer be a place for the record-breaking word.
Thus, a true phenomenon is fading into the past – a concept obtained in a way natural for the German language by adding words and meanings, complex but quite accessible to decipher. 'Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is the longest authentic word in the German language to date,' claimed Berlin linguist Professor Anatol Stefanovich just a few weeks ago. Linguists consider as authentic, real words only those that have actually appeared at least once in texts printed in German: RkReÜAÜG fully met these criteria.
Actually, there are dozens of artificially formed words longer than the record holder, but they are not in circulation because they denote abstract, non-existent concepts or objects. Linguists owe most of the complex linguistic constructions and endless words to the German love of order and meticulous regulations: the lion's share of record-breaking words is born in the depths of the subconscious of legal text writers.
The Law on Beef Labels is a suitable example of the versatility of the German language: theoretically, as in Finnish or Hungarian, it is possible to create endless terms. 'Each subsequent grammatical function attaches itself to the previous word, which can accordingly easily change its gender,' explains the head of the Society for the Development of the German Language, which unites Germanists. Its employees now have to search for a new record holder.
The predecessor of the 'beef' word, the 'regulation on the redistribution of functions for supervision of traffic permits on land plots' consisting of 67 letters – Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung – disappeared into oblivion in 2007. The reason for the removal of the champion's powers was also the repeal of the regulation itself. German linguists are eagerly awaiting new ideas from domestic legislators. However, 'now other states will have to take care of long words,' believe in the Ministry of Agriculture of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Pyotr LEVSKY,
'Russkaya Germaniya'.