But you won't be tested!

Compass Tours Incoming have an experienced, multilingual team, once pulling off 2,000 different itineraries for 2,000 Brazilian incentive travellers within one week by hiring every Portuguese-speaking guide in Germany. Here they offer a fun insight into their language

• Germany’s longest word at 63 letters was ‘Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz’ (law delegating beef label monitoring), but was removed from the German language 10 years ago, but there are still some crackers – ‘kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung’ (automobile liability insurance) and ‘donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe’ (widow of a Danube steamboat company captain), to name but two.

• The American author Mark Twain, not known for being a fan of the German language, once declared: “I never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.”

• The term “ecology” was first coined by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866.

• Trabant, the name given to East Germany’s answer to Audi and Mercedes Benz, literally means “satellite”. It was intended as a tribute to the first-ever satellite – the Soviet Sputnik, which went into space in 1957.

• German is the most widely spoken language in the European Union – ahead of Spanish, French and even English. It is the official language in Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein and one of the official languages in Switzerland and Luxembourg. German ranks 11th in the list of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

• Compass Tours Incoming's expert, multilingual team across four offices Berlin, Munch, Frankfurt and Hamburg, offers you local knowledge, support for international groups, and with longstanding industry relations and buying power, offers event planners keenly priced proposals for any event in Germany   

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