Ach, mein Kopf!

The German language is not a friendly one to outsiders. There's that fussy syntax that places verbs in strange (but precise!) places and all those grammatical cases that depend on things like prepositions and action. "Surely," as Mark Twain pointedly and hilariously observed, "there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp."

But I do love trying to decipher those compound centisyllabic nouns and wish that English were more amenable to constructing similar ones to describe complex phenomena. A couple friends of mine were saying recently that there should be a long German word to represent something-that-seems-worthy-of-one's-support-but-that-
incites-reservations-because-its-motives-may-not-be-entirely-chaste. The example we had in mind was the Ronald McDonald House.

I also think there should be a word in German to describe a marketing idea that's so transparently stupid yet brilliant in its own way because enough rubes will make it a success. This idea came to me first when I saw an ad for squirt-bottle salad dressing; I thought of it again when I saw this promo for National Bingo Night.

Otherwise, German can keep its datives and accusatives all to itself.