German orthography
Compound words, including nouns, are written together, e.g. "Haustür" (Haus+Tür; house door), "Tischlampe" (Tisch+Lampe; table lamp), "Kaltwasserhahn" (Kalt+Wasser+Hahn; cold water tap/faucet). This can lead to long words: the longest word in regular use, "Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften" ("legal protection insurance companies"), consists of 39 letters; while the longest German word ever published ("Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft", "Association for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services") has 79 letters.
Erika Fuchs
She also used verbs shortened to their stems not only to imitate sounds (onomatopoeia), such as "schluck", "stöhn", "knarr", "klimper" (gulp, groan, creak, chink/jingle), but also to represent soundless events: "grübel", "staun", "zitter" (ponder, goggle, tremble). The word for these soundwords in German is now an "Erikativ", a tongue-in-cheek word utilizing Fuchs's first name, made to resemble grammatical terms such as "Infinitiv" (infinitive), "Indikativ" (indicative mood), "Akkusativ" (accusative case), etc. "Erikative" are commonly used in Internet forums and chatrooms to describe what people are doing as they write, which has become the common German form of the Internet slang behavior known in English as emoting. English examples: *ducks*, *runs away*, etc. The "Erikativ" is the German form of those ("*duck*", "*weglauf*", respectively).