A German lawyer has suggested that his Irish professional peer group is riddled with sesquipedalians. Translated into the plain English which was the topic of an address yesterday in Dublin, this is a criticism of the Irish legal fraternity for its reliance on archaic language and tautology.
According to Mr Christopher Arend, Irish lawyers are frequently "sesquipedalians" (given to using long words) whose verbiage is negating their semantic "verisimilitude" (speaking the truth).
Mr Arend, of the Frankfurt law firm Oppenhoff & Radler, was speaking in plain English at the Corporate and Public Services Solicitors' Association annual conference in Dublin.
His campaign in support of "plain English", whatever about plain German, may never permeate the walls of the Law Library, but it is "hereby acknowledged with due consideration" that it was "set forth" with "prompt execution".
However, the State's legal eagles may decide that a move towards such frank speaking "might reasonably impair their ability to conduct their business with due effect".
Mr Arend was not expressing Schadenfreude about Irish legal wordiness but simply warning that by tying themselves up in verbs, lawyers could land their clients in court.
"Drafting contracts should not be an exercise for the lawyers to see how many thoughts and words they can cram into a single sentence. Too many words and too many thoughts lead to ambiguities. Ambiguities lead to misunderstandings and misunderstandings can lead to unnecessary litigation," he said - not very sparingly.
Mr Arend said English, American and "presumably Irish law", when translated into his mother tongue, often "revealed weaknesses in the original wording". He circulated to the verbose audience a range of examples where English language legal contracts, when placed alongside their Germanic equivalents, were pleonastic (used excessive words) and supererogatory (superfluous).
The audience, no doubt used to handling the most exasperating legalese, were shown how they could - presuming they wanted to - cut down the mass of verbiage to short readable sentences when drawing up contracts.
Example A was: "Buyers are duly organised under the laws of their respective jurisdictions of organisation and have corporate power and authority to enter into this agreement and perform their respective obligations hereunder." This simply meant somebody was prepared to buy something.
Example B was: "Neither the execution and delivery of this agreement nor compliance by buyers with its terms and provisions violate or result in a breach of or constitute a default under any law, rule, regulation, judgement, injunction to which any buyer is subject."
In other words, as Mr Arend explained, concluding this agreement had no impact on other legal arrangements between the parties. And all this from a representative of the nation which gave the world Personenkraftwagen. For the non-German speaker, that is a car.