Informationsaufnahmemöglichkeit

The above is a word taken from my Flugmedizinvorlesung (Flight Medicine lecture), and really, in the scheme of things, it is not that long at all. One thing that you must know about Germans, is that they love to make up words. It is quite acceptable German to stick together a bunch of words and make a new word out of them. This is so de rigueur, that they have their own word for ‘made-up words’: das Kunstwort, which itself is a compound word of Kunst ‘art’ and Wort ‘word’. That direct translations just about sums up about how Germans think of making up words: To them, it is an art form.

In case you are wondering, the title word is made up of Information ‘information’, Aufnahme ‘reception’ and Möglichkeit ‘possibility/potential’, which renders it as being a really fancy way of saying the possibility of receiving information. This word could have been taken farther, as the phrase that it came from was Informationsaufnahmemöglichkeit des Menschen ‘the potential for receiving information of people’ when it could easily have been Menschensinformationsaufnahmemöglichkeit ‘the human potential for the reception of information’. All of that, packed into one word. Ah, the power of Deutsch.

PS: Today is Cinco de Mayo (thin’ko day My’o, as opposed to sink’o day Mayo, since I am learning Spanish from a Spaniard and not a Mexican… though it is a Mexican holiday…) and Derby Day (der’by day, as opposed to dar’by day, but, since the Queen is visiting, the latter might be acceptable... though it is Kentucky...).