“My philological English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.”
– Mark Twain, “That Awful German Language“
Twain was likely making a joke but, in my experience, he is directionally accurate.
He provides several examples of German that “are not words, they are alphabetical processions”. Twain’s longest is Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen, a 37-letter....