The human world loathes you, cringes at the sight of you, devises ever new ways to exterminate you.  What could be a worse fate for any animal?  Only one thing: being called German.

Though no more German than African bush babies, we are biologically classified as Blattella germanica.  "Light-shunning Germans."  The German roach.

Boksballen!

There is a faint twinkle of hope in the Teutonic Darkness. The German language is so overwrought that parts of it must be cast off, like timbers from a sinking brig.  Just recently it jettisoned its longest word: Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz. 

What kind of people could allow such an egg to grow on its national glottis?  The kind that needs one word for "law delegating beef label monitoring."  The reigning chunk of HunSpeak is  Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe. It must be that "widow of a Danube steamboat company captain" takes too long to say.

Now we wait our turn to go the way of the beef and the boats. How long will it be before the Bosch tire of "Blattella" and set it, and us, free? We long, as do you all, to make our own words for ourselves. The Germans shouldn't care. To them everyone is vermin, and someone will step up and take our place.  The alternative is to wait us out, and no one ever wins that contest.