Germany "streamlines" its armed forces with an unpronounceable law

 

I had to laugh at this headline:

Germany passes ‘Bundeswehrbeschaffungsbeschleunigungsgesetz’ law to streamline army

Ironically, the law, which is supposed to make life easier for defence contractors and trade negotiators, is one of the longest words in the German language and difficult to pronounce.

. . .

Running at 43 letters long, Bundeswehrbeschaffungsbeschleunigungsgesetz is one of the longest words in German.

Germany is no stranger to having very long names for laws and business regulations, such as “Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz,” an archaic rule about beef standards which was once the longest German word.

The longest official German word, at 72 letters, is “Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft”, referring to a trade association for steamboats.

There's more at the link addressing Germany's military purchasing reforms (as opposed to its grammar and vocabulary, which could probably use some streamlining too).  Meanwhile, if Russia tries to sabotage Germany's military buildup, as it's been doing to its efforts to interrupt the supply of weapons to Ukraine, it now has a new problem:  how can it tell its saboteurs to target something they can't pronounce???

Growing up in South Africa, where the Afrikaans language is widely used, I'm accustomed to the problem.  Afrikaans is basically a derivative of Dutch as it was spoken during the 17th and 18th centuries, brought to South Africa by the original settlers;  and that, in turn, was a derivative of medieval Germanic languages.  It led to some very long and convoluted words.  Examples:

• There's a very dry part of the country named Putsonderwater (literally, "hole without water").  However, when a flood came down the Orange River during the 1980's, for a while it became known as Putonderwater (literally, "hole under water"), much to the amusement of everyone except those living there.
• A famous (and probably exaggerated) tale from colonial days tells of the hunter who managed to kill two Cape buffalo with a single shot from his 4-bore muzzle-loading rifle.  He proposed to immortalize the feat by naming the place where he made the shot "Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein" (meaning, in colloquial translation, "The spring where I killed two buffalo with one shot").  Expressing all that as a single word usually led to hilarity.

I want to see how US defense contractors will go about translating that German word (and all its supporting documentation and vocabulary) into English for their sales staff's attention.  This could be entertaining . . . and tongue-twisting!

Peter