Get your mouth around this

How can you spend ten minutes on the tube trying to say just one word? If you haven’t mastered the German language, how about trying to say Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (we'll save you it’s dull translation… well, OK, if you insist: the law on the transfer of requirements and surveillance of labelling of beef). We tested the ability of the editorial team to say the word: results were lingual meltdown from our French editor, sudden onset of dyslexia from the English side, a verbal stew from our Spanish colleague, hara kiri from our Italian journalist … and ten out of ten for the German.

Germany is a great place for compound words. The secret? The Saxon genitive. A small 's' between words which allows them to attach themselves to whatever word precedes them. To say the same thing in French would require at least 14 words! In France and Spain the award usually goes to anticonstitutionnellement and anticonstitucionalmente respectively, less than 26 letters. A paltry score when compared to the Polish dziewięćdziesięciodziewięcionarodowościowy, which means "to have 99 nationalities". Another unpronounceable word unless Polish is your language.

In the humour category, the statuette goes to England: the joke is to say that the longest word is smiles , because between there is a 'mile' first and the last 's'! Amongst these compound word gems which cause such painful pronunciation, the neologism is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (in Italian, in Spain, in French, in Germany), from the Disney film Mary Poppins (1964). The perfect nanny, who descends from the sky with the aid of an umbrella, taunted us with her flawless elocution of a word that has caused headaches ever since. The lyrics of the song explain that when pronouncing it, "you will always have a precocious air" and that people will think that "he must be an intelligent man." Indeed...

In the 'paradox' category, the Oscar for the longest word goes to Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which is attributed to the English, Spanish and German languages. Its meaning? "The fear of pronouncing words that are too long." No comment. And finally, the big winner of the contest is an Inuit word. I will let you discover it yourselves as I’m still in the process of counting the letters …

France Dutertre - Paris (Translation - darrenthomps)