German is a highly creative language. There are some wonderful nouns to describe aspects of human experience such as Waldeinsamkeit (the feeling one has being alone in the forest) or Ohrwurm (actually means earwig but is mostly used to describe a catchy tune that you simply cannot get out of your head) or Torschlusspanik (the fear that time is running out to achieve a life goal – like learning German, that the door is shutting on you). Then there are simple compounds e.g. Arbeitgeber*in (work giver/employer) and Arbeitnehmer*in (work taker/employee). And then there are some incredibly long (and quite scary) words to describe very specific things, often used in bureaucracy. But you can break them down into their parts and the last word in the compound will be the actual thing being described and this word will determine the gender and plural. For example, check out these 20 Longest German words and what they mean.
Then listen to a choir sing what they think is The Longest German Word. Can you work out what the word means?
