We've been having a

fine time, me and The Yard Man, with our German friend, Milan, who is staying with us for a few weeks.

Milan spends a good bit of the day with The Yard Man, but in the evening we all three eat supper together. Then we spend a few hours conversing in English and German (doch mostly English, it's true).  We communicate in lovely multi-lingual laughter, as well.

A few evenings ago Milan stood on a footstool and delivered some lines from Much Ado About Nothing.  He performed the lead role in this Shakespearean play at his high school about a year and a half ago.    (There's a reason, Dear Reader, why "German script for Much Ado" was displayed on my phone for a little while.  Milan was refreshing his memory).

The next night we studied photos that The Yard Man had taken of Milan's home in Germany when Milan was six years old.  After that, we googled the longest word in the English language and the longest word in the German language.  Before we looked up the words
I had said to Milan, "The longest word in the English language is ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM."

"No," said Milan, "That can't be!"

 "Yes, yes! It is!" I insisted.  "It has twenty-eight letters and eleven syllables!"

Then we looked up the longest German word (brace yourself, Reader Dear).  It is:


Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz

I confess that I shrieked with laughter!
"It's no wonder," I said to Milan when I caught my breath, "that you didn't think that puny twenty-eight letter English word would be the longest one we had!"  

Well, then, we looked up "Longest Word in English" and what do you know, Dear Reader. I had to eat my words! Turns out, the lengthiest word listed is a forty-five-letter word for "A supposed lung disease."  (Humph!  I decided right then and there to make up a word for "To assign a fancy made-up word for a supposed something-or-other in which the word itself is longer than the meaning."  I have yet to coin the word, but the letter count will be in the high nineties.

Of course, after our exhaustive perusal of long German and English words, Milan and I thought to research "Longest Word in the World".  Here, Dear One, is where things get more than a little weird!  If you aren't busy for the next three and a half hours, go ahead and let it roll off your tongue!

"The longest word in English has 189,819 letters and would take you three and a half hours to pronounce correctly. Seriously. It's the chemical name of Titin (or connectin), a giant protein that functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle."

Reader Dear, I was no longer laughing.  Nor was Milan.  We came to an International Agreement this was Nothing Short of Ridiculous!

After our study of long words, we regaled each other with tongue twisters in our various tongues.  We did some long laughing.
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