Language/German/Vocabulary/longest-word

Because German is an "agglutinative" language, meaning a language in which words are made up of distinct other component of meaning, words can be extremely longs.

Actually, the following word is the longest of European languages:

Donau­dampfschiffahrts­elektrizitäten­hauptbetriebswerk­bauunterbeamten­gesellschaftsdienstjubiläumsanstecknadelverzeichnis, the longest German word has 118 (!) letters

It would be translated in English into 20 words "Association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services work-jubilee pins index."