Re: Longest words

At 2:45 am -0400 4/5/01, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>Daniel44 wrote:
>>Hei koikitin, (Hey everyone)
>>
>>I'm wondering, what's the longest word in a natural or constructed language
>>that you can think of (and spell correctly!)
[snip]
>
>'Materia-antimateria-annihilationskraftverksbygge', 46 letters, not counting
>the hyphens.
>It's strained, to my native ears, but acceptable Swedish for "construction
>of a matter-antimatter annihilation power plant".
Not bad - but if Daniel wants long words, there's the famous ancient Greek
one from one of Aristophanes comedies. I'll have to transliterate, of
course, as email is not friendly to Greek characters; in order to keep the
number of letters the same I'll adopt the following conventions:
{P} denotes phi  /p_h/
{K} denotes khi  /k_h/
{Y} denotes psi  /ps/
{E} denotes eta  /E:/
{O} denotes omega  /O:/

upsilon /y/ is denoted by {u}  ;)

lopadotemaKoselaKogaleokranioleiYanodrimupotrimatosilPiokarabomelitokatakeXumeno
kiXlepikossuPoPattoperisteralektruonoptokePalliokigXlopeleiolagOiosiraiobaPEtrag
anopterugOn

Phew - I've checked it through and hope there are no typos  :)

166 letters I think!

It's a sort of stew; the word is compounded of the various ingredients but
the compounds take on their correct forms for compounding & the word is
correctly formed.  The test, of course, was to see if the actor could say
the whole thing straight throught without taking breath!
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At 9:54 am +0100 4/5/01, Daniel44 wrote:
>'nokommunismikirojarakahojanhakkovahojansoikalullatatsta' (55 letters)
>
>trans: 'from his cute scholars of anti-communism book-loving'
Some way to go to catch up with Aristophanes.

But if you want comparison with conlangs, Volapük produced some fearsome
mosters in its time.

Ray.


=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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