Don't worry, it is not as bad as it sounds, but it is somewhat contagious.
Abwrackpraemie is German for "car scrappage bonus" which is what you get if you turn in your older lower mpg car for a new higher mpg car, I assume.
The word was added to the German Language earlier today as five thousand words in total were loaded into Das Dictionary. Other words include Konjunkturpaket (stimulus package) and "After-Show-Party" (that one is from English). Oh, and we have a new verb in German as well: Twittern. Not sure what it means, though.
There is a story on this here at the BBC or you can visit the dictionary's site here.
Humanities & Social Science
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When I was in high school I had the option to take either Spanish, Italian, French or German. I chose Spanish but I heard German was hellish because of the fact that they string words together to form new ones.
Posted by: Tony P | July 22, 2009 8:13 PM
I took German 1201 (a 3-hour credit) in first year university. I also took a 3-hour credit in French to fulfill my "6 hrs in non-English" core requirement. Fast forward five years, I'm told I don't qualify to graduate, as the courses have to be in the same language.
I also sucked at German. And this is probably at least partly why. The fact that you don't combine separate words to new phrases, you actually create new words out of the constituent words, just bugs the hell out of me. Never did get all those other people that go "oh, it's so much like English, it's easy!" Those people are wrong and dumb and smelly.
Posted by: Jason Thibeault | July 22, 2009 8:49 PM
When I was a postdoc, we once received a new incubator from a German company, with assembly instructions available only in German. My boss held up one of the many, many pieces and asked "What do you think this is for?"
"That?" I replied, "Oh, that's the Wasserdraussenlassenstopfen."
The real name of the piece in the assembly instructions wasn't far off. We English-speakers would call it a stopper.
Posted by: Barn Owl | July 23, 2009 6:54 AM
Peak performers in this discipline are german bureaucrats.
The government in Mecklenburg Vorpomjmern enacted a law called
Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (RkReÜAÜG M-V)
http://mv.juris.de/mv/RkReUeAUeG_MV_rahmen.htm
Posted by: H Kaiser | July 23, 2009 7:20 AM
Wasn't that a Marty Wilde song?
Wait....never mind.
Posted by: NJ | July 23, 2009 7:21 AM