Dear Doublewe,

It seems to me there are a lot of people here who need to hone their semantic skills quite a bit.

a) Idiosyncratic = a language that is particular to an individual or group of people i.e. Beamten.

b) Is Oli_4D really right? Then, why does he write "they don't really exactly mean the same", while you appear to think the "words all have a similar, but not an identical meaning"?

c) Synonym = a word or phrase with a meaning that is very similar to another word or phrase.

d) Also please note I never for a single second suggested the sentence doesn't make perfect sense. I merely wrote it is a weird sentence, since it contains a whole pile of synonyms.

I very much doubt the lack of responses has anything to do my initial reply to Oli_4D. Rather, it appears, there are simply not very many people around who know enough about their own language.

Easy though, since I first posted I have received excellent help and examples from one of Switzerland's leading Sprachforscher.

Thanks again and with best regards,
DrCaffeine

Thanks Oli_4D for your patronising German lesson, but Thema verfehlt, as my former German teacher would say...

Oh and, by the way, the words do all virtually have the same meaning, just maybe not to a Swiss person who admits having difficulties understanding a straight German sentence consisting, as it does, of a mere fifteen words.

As Ancient Greek tells us (syn & onoma), synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Then again you probably never enjoyed Ancient Greek or Latin at school.

In any case, if anybody out there has a sensible suggestion as to similar examples of Beamtendeutsch, and feels capable of understanding a relatively simple German fifteen word sentence, I'd love to hear from them.

Cheers, DrCaffeine