[germanier]

Minor nitpick: The ruling court was not "the German Supreme Court" (which there is no single direct equivalent - often the term is used for the Bundesverfassungsgericht but that's problematic on many levels). The court was the Bundesgerichtshof which is the highest court for civil cases. Best is the avoid the term "Supreme Court" at all when talking about the German court system.

[Tomte]

The Bundesgerichtshof is also Supreme Court for criminal cases.

The phrase "Supreme Court" is indeed problematic, since we have quite a few of them (administrative law, labor law, finance law, social law, plus BGH and BVerfG), but I think it's okay to call the Bundesgerichtshof so.

More okay than calling our Federal Constitutional Court "Supreme Court", at least, since generally speaking the Constitutional Court is not "above" the other courts.

[germanier]

I would be happy with calling it "a German supreme court" (which is maybe misleading but technically correct). The phrasing "the German Supreme Court" implies that there is only one and it's somewhat comparable to the US Supreme Court which are both wrong assumptions.

[justin66]

> The phrase "Supreme Court" is indeed problematic, since we have quite a few of them

The same thing is true in the United States. It's a term that can mean a few different things on the state level, depending on which state you're talking about.

[manojlds]

    which is the highest court for civil cases

As a casual reader, then I am happy that they used Supreme Court. I don't want to know more about the German legal system to know that this could possibly be the highest court for such cases.

[chronial]

Well, this ruling could still be challenged by the Bundesverfassungsgericht. So I think you are getting the wrong impression from "Supreme Court".

[Tomte]

Probably not. I just don't see a valid constitutional complaint anywhere.

That's what I mean with "Constitutional Court is not above the Federal Court".

Unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, the Federal Constitutional Court only deals with constitutional questions. It is decidedly not an appellate court.

And even if you wanted to claim the decision was wrong, a simple error in judgment by another court is not grounds for constitutional review.

[baldfat]

> Bundesverfassungsgericht

I always smile seeing long German words. I just imagine some fellow American being in a public setting and having to attempt to pronounce the word. I am a horrible speller and I feel I would be so much worst if I had to spell German words.

[tinco]

Well, long German words are just contractions, so a misspelling of 'Bundesverfassungsgericht' would be 'Bundes verfassungs gericht' which roughly would be 'federal constitutional court'. So if you'd like to know how it feels spelling in this style, just try spelling federalconstitutionalcourt. In English contractions like that are rare and sound weird when pronounced, but in German there is a sort of rhythm to it that makes it fit and not sound much different (if at all) from if they were not contracted.

[gioele]

> In English contractions like that are rare and sound weird when pronounced,

English does exactly the same: "3-year mandatory contract" is pronounced as a single word. It is just a matter of writing convention.

«English word chains such as _child labour law_ may count as well, because it is merely an orthographic convention to write them as isolated words. Grammatically and phonetically they behave like one word (stress on the first syllable, plural morpheme at the end).»

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_language

[tinco]

Cool thanks, always nice to have some theory behind it. When I pronounced 'federalconstitutionalcourt' I did it like I imagined a CNN news reader would pronounce it, with big emphasis on each word. When I try as you say with stress on the first syllable it does sound more like one word, not so awkward at all.

[couchand]

Not to get too far off-topic, but the mitigating factor is that German has quite regular pronunciation. As soon as you hear a new word you likely know exactly how it's spelled.

[baldfat]

As opposed to English!!! http://mentalfloss.com/article/49960/why-english-spelling-so...

[ajmurmann]

German used to be more like that buta spelling reform in 1996 fixed many of these issues. All my spelling grades got significantly better (less terrible) once that happened.

[meatysnapper]

Thanks for nothing, Normandy!

[denzil_correa]

In Germany, if a Youtube video isn't available - it shows that the video isn't available due to an organization named GEMA. I wondered what GEMA was and promptly searched to find out this. Sigh!

> Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEMA_(German_organization)