Buying a used car

Four of the longest words on this list share a small piece of grammar that looks like a slip: die Verhandlungsbasis, der Wartungsstau, die Zulassungsbescheinigung and der Gewährleistungsausschluss. Each first half ends in -ung, and each is followed by an s before the next noun begins. It is not a genitive: die Verhandlung is feminine, and a feminine noun never takes a genitive -s. It is a joint, das Fugen-s, and after -ung it is not optional. The same holds after -heit, -keit, -schaft and -ion, so a learner who meets a new compound built on one of those endings can put the s in without looking it up. The word is worth knowing for its own sake, too. In a used-car advert the two letters VB after the price stand for Verhandlungsbasis, and they say that the figure is where the haggling starts, not where it ends.