Longest words

The longest word in any given language depends on the word formation rules of each specific language, and on the types of words allowed for consideration.

Special considerations

Agglutinative languages allow for the creation of long words via compounding. Words consisting of hundreds, or even thousands of characters have been coined with the goal of being ranked among the world's longest words. Even non-agglutinative languages may allow word formation of theoretically limitless length in certain contexts. An example common to many languages in the term for a very remote ancestor, "great-great-.....-grandfather", where formally the prefix "great-" may be repeated any number of times.

Systematic names of chemical compounds can run to hundreds of thousands of characters in length. The rules of creation of such names are commonly defined by international bodies, therefore they formally belong to many languages. The longest recognized systematic name is for the protein titin, at 189,819 letters.^[1] While lexicographers regard generic names of chemical compounds as verbal formulae rather than words,^[2] for its sheer length the systematic name for titin is often included in longest-word lists.

Longest word candidates may be judged by their acceptance in major dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary or in record-keeping publications like Guinness World Records, and by the frequency of their use in ordinary language.

Afrikaans

Afrikaans, as it is a daughter language of the Dutch language, is capable of forming compounds of potentially limitless length in the same way as in the Dutch language. According to the Total Book of South African Records, the longest word in the language is^[3] Tweedehandsemotorverkoopsmannevakbondstakingsvergaderingsameroeperstoespraakskrywerspersverklaringuitreikingsmediakonferensieaankondiging (136 letters), which means "issuable media conference's announcement at a press release regarding the convener's speech at a secondhand car dealership union's strike meeting". This word, however, is contrived to be long and does not occur in everyday speech or writing.

Basque

The longest Basque toponym is Azpilicuetagaraicosaroyarenberecolarrea (39).^[4]

Bulgarian

The Bulgarian online etymological dictionary claims that longest word in Bulgarian to be the 39-letter-long непротивоконституционствувателствувайте (neprotivokonstitutsionstvuvatelstvuvayte), introduced in the Constitution of Bulgaria of 1947 (Dimitrov Constitution). ^[5] The word means "do not perform actions against the constitution" (addressed to more than one person).

Catalan

The longest word in Catalan is considered to be Anticonstitucionalment, an adverb meaning "[done in a way that is] against the constitution", however, the scientific word Psiconeuroimmunoendocrinologia, related to endocrinology has been proposed by the University of Barcelona to be the true longest word.^[6]

Danish

Longer words can be created as Danish grammar allows its user to put nouns together, forming brand new words, making it possible for a word to be arbitrarily long.

For instance, in the fairy tale The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, the author Hans Christian Andersen named one of the characters Gedebukkebensoverogundergeneralkrigskommandersergenten ("General-clothes-press-inspector-head-superintendent-Goat-legs" or in literal translation "the goaty-legged-above-and-under-general-war-commanding-sergeant") as a parody on the long Danish military titles. This word is 54 letters long.

Dutch

Dutch, like many Germanic languages, is capable of forming compounds of potentially limitless length. The 53-letter word Kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedenplan, meaning "preparation activities plan for a children's carnival procession", was cited by the 1996 Guinness Book of World Records as the longest Dutch word.^[7]

The longest word in the authoritative Van Dale Dutch dictionary (2009 edition) in plural form is meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornissen;^[8] 38 letters long, meaning "multiple personality disorders". The entry in the dictionary however is in the singular, counting 35 letters.

The free OpenTaal dictionary,^[9] which has been certified by the Dutch Language Union (the official Dutch language institute) and is included in many open-source applications, contains the following longest words, which are 40 letters long:

• vervoerdersaansprakelijkheidsverzekering, "carriers' liability insurance";
• bestuurdersaansprakelijkheidsverzekering, "drivers' liability insurance";
• overeenstemmingsbeoordelingsprocedures, "conformity assessment procedures" (38 letters)

The word often said to be the longest in Dutch – probably because of its funny meaning and alliteration – which has also appeared in print, is Hottentottensoldatententententoonstellingsbouwterrein ("construction ground for the Hottentot soldiers' tents exhibition"); counting 53 letters.

English

The 45-letter word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest English word that appears in a major dictionary.^{[10] [11]} Originally coined to become a candidate for the longest word in English, the term eventually developed some independent use in medicine.^[12] It is referred to as "P45" by researchers.^[13]

Antidisestablishmentarianism, at 28 letters, is the longest non-coined, non-systematic English word in Oxford Dictionaries.^[10] It refers to a 19th-century political movement that opposed the disestablishment of the Church of England as the state church of England.

Floccinaucinihilipilification, at 29 letters and meaning the act of estimating something as being worth so little as to be practically valueless, or the habit of doing so, is the longest non-technical, coined word in Oxford Dictionaries of the English language.^[10]

Esperanto

The longest official Esperanto roots are 12 letters long, shown here with the added substantive "-o" ending:

• administracio (administration),
• aŭtobiografio (autobiography),
• diskriminacii (to discriminate),
• konservatorio (conservatory),
• paleontologio (palaeontology),
• paralelogramo (parallelogram), and
• trigonometrio (trigonometry).^[14]

Since Esperanto allows word compounding, there are no limits on how long a word can theoretically become. A relatively short example is the 46-letter komencopaleontologiokonservatoriaĉestriĝontajn, which is an (accusative and plural) adjective that means "about to begin to become the leader of a contemptible palaeontology conservatory". (Such clusters are not considered good style, but are permissible under the rules of Esperanto grammar.)

Finnish

Three examples of long words that have been in everyday use in the Finnish language are kolmivaihekilowattituntimittari which means "three phase kilowatt hour meter" (32 letters), peruspalveluliikelaitoskuntayhtymä ("a public utility of a municipal federation for provision of basic services", 34 letters)^[15] and lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas "airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student" (61 letters), an actual military term, although one which has been deprecated. If conjugated forms are allowed, even longer real words can be made. Allowing derivatives and clitics allows the already lengthy word to grow even longer, although the usability of the word starts to degrade. Because Finnish uses free forming of composite words, new words can even be formed during a conversation. One can add nouns after each other without breaking grammar rules.

If one allows artificial constructs as well as using clitics and conjugated forms, one can create even longer words: such as kumarreksituteskenteleentuvaisehkollaismaisekkuudellisenneskenteluttelemattomammuuksissansakaankopahan (102 letters), which was created by Artturi Kannisto.^[16]

The longest non-compound (a single stem with prefixes and suffixes) Finnish word recognised by the Guinness Book of Records is epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän (see also Agglutination#Extremes), based on the stem järki (reason, sanity), and it means: I wonder if – even with his/her quality of not having been made unsystematized

Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä and a defunct bar named after it, Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsi-baari, are the longest place names in use.

French

German

In German, whole numbers (smaller than 1 million) can be expressed as single words, which makes siebenhundertsiebenundsiebzigtausendsiebenhundertsiebenundsiebzig (777,777) a 65 letter word. In combination with -malig or, as an inflected noun, (des …) -maligen, all numbers can be written as one word. A 79 letter word, Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft, was named the longest published word in the German language by the 1972 Guinness Book of World Records, but longer words are possible. The word was the name of a prewar Viennese club for subordinate officials of the headquarters of the electrical division of the company named the Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft, which operated steam boats on the Danube river.

The longest word that is not created artificially as a longest-word record seems to be Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz at 63 letters. The word means "law delegating beef label monitoring" but as of 2013, it was removed from the books because European Union regulations have changed and that particular law became obsolete, leading to news reports that Germany "had lost its longest word".^[17]

In December 2016 the 51-letter word Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung ("deferral of the second iteration of the federal presidential run-off election") was elected the Austrian Word of the Year 2016.^[18] The jury called it a "descriptive word" which "in terms of its content as well as its length, is a symbol and an ironic form of commentary for the political events of this year, characterized by the very long campaign for the presidential election, the challenges of the voting process, and its reiteration."^[18][19]

Greek

In his comedy Assemblywomen (c. 392 BC), Aristophanes coined the 173-letter word Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon, a fictional food dish consisting of a combination of fish and other meat. The word is cited as the longest ancient Greek word ever written.^[20] A modern Greek word of 22 letters is ηλεκτροεγκεφαλογράφημα (ilektroenkefalográfima) (gen. ηλεκτροεγκεφαλογραφήματος (ilektroenkefalografímatos), 25 letters) meaning "electroencephalogram".

Hungarian

Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért, with 44 letters is one example of a long word in the Hungarian language and means something like "for your [plural] continued behaviour as if you could not be desecrated". It is already morphed, since Hungarian is an agglutinative language. The language does not have a "longest word" due to its agglutinating nature. It is always possible to construct a longer one with enough creativity. For example, legösszetettebbszóhosszúságvilágrekorddöntéskényszerneurózistünetegyüttesmegnyilvánulásfejleszthetőségvizsgálataitokról (119 letters), which means: "About your investigations of the upgradeability of the manifestation of the syndrome of the neurosis about the need to decide which is the world record of the most complex longest word."

The longest dictionary form word is the word in use (although it is constructed from the word: szent meaning: "saint"), megszentségteleníthetetlen, with 25 characters, and means "something that cannot be desecrated".

Icelandic

Icelandic has the ability to form compounds of arbitrary length by stringing together genitives (eignarfallssamsetning), so no single words of maximal length exist in the language. However, vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúr and vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúraútidyralyklakippuhringur are sometimes cited as particularly long words;^[21] the latter has 64 letters and means "a keychain ring for the outdoor key of road workers shed in a moor called Vaðlaheiði".

Analysis of a corpus of contemporary Icelandic texts by Uwe Quasthoff, Sabine Fiedler and Erla Hallsteinsdóttir identified Alþjóðaflutningaverkamannasambandsins ("of the International Transport Workers' Federation"; 37 letters) and Norðvestur-Atlantshafsfiskveiðistofnunarinnar ("of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries' Organization"; 45 letters) as the longest unhyphenated and hyphenated words.^[22]

The longest word occurring at least twice in the University of Leipzig isl-is_web_2015 corpus is Auðmannastjórnvaldaembættisstjórnmálaverkalýðsverðlausraverðbréfaábyrgðarlausrakvótaræningjaaftaníossaspilling (110 letters).^[23]

Italian

The longest word in Italian is traditionally precipitevolissimevolmente, which is a 26-letter-long adverb.^[24] It is formed by subsequent addition of postfixes to the original root:

1. precipitevole: "hasty";
2. precipitevolissimo: "very hasty";
3. precipitevolissimevole: "[of someone/something] that acts very hastily", (not grammatically correct);
4. precipitevolissimevolmente: "in a way like someone/something that acts very hastily" (not grammatically correct, but nowadays part of the language).

The word is never used in every-day language, but in jokes. Nevertheless, it is an official part of Italian language; it was coined in 1677 by poet Francesco Moneti:

finché alla terra alfin torna repente / precipitevolissimevolmente

— Francesco Moneti, Cortona Convertita, canto III, LXV

The word technically violates Italian grammar rules, the correct form being precipitevolissimamente, which is three letters and one syllable shorter. The poet coined the new word to have 11 syllables in the second verse.

Other words can be created with a similar (and grammatically correct) mechanism starting from a longer root, winding up with a longer word. Some examples are:

• sovramagnificentissimamente (cited by Dante Alighieri in De vulgari eloquentia), 27 letters, "in a way that is more than magnificent by far" (archaic);^[25]
• incontrovertibilissimamente, 27 letters, "in a way that is very difficult to falsify";
• particolareggiatissimamente, 27 letters, "in an extremely detailed way";
• anticostituzionalissimamente, 28 letters, "in a way that strongly violates the constitution".

The longest accepted neologism is psiconeuroendocrinoimmunologia (30 letters)..

Other long words are:

• hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliofobia (35 letters)
• nonilfenossipolietilenossietonolo (33 letters)
• pentagonododecaedrotetraedrico (30 letters)
• esofagodermatodigiunoplastica (29 letters)
• elettroencefalograficamente (27 letters)
• diclorodifeniltricloroetano (27 letters)
• intradermopalpebroreazione (26 letters).

Korean

There is some disagreement about what is the longest word in the Korean language. The longest word appearing in the Standard Korean Dictionary published by the National Institute of the Korean Language is 청자양인각연당초상감모란문은구대접 (靑瓷陽印刻蓮唐草象嵌牡丹文銀釦대접); Revised Romanization: cheongjayang-in-gakyeondangchosang-gammoranmuneun-gudaejeop, which is a kind of ceramic bowl from the Goryeo dynasty; that word is 17 syllable blocks long, and contains a total of 46 hangul letters.^[26][27] The term 니코틴아마이드 아데닌 다이뉴클레오타이드 (nikotin-amaideu adenin dainyukeulle-otaideu), a phonetic transcription of "nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide", has a larger number of syllable blocks (19) but a smaller number of letters (41), and also might not qualify as a single word due to the spaces.

In proper nouns, many Korean monarchs have long posthumous names built from many different Sino-Korean nouns describing their positive characteristics, for example Sunjo of Joseon, whose full posthumous name is the 77-syllable-block 순조선각연덕현도경인순희체성응명흠광석경계천배극융원돈휴의행소윤희화준렬대중지정홍훈철모건시태형창운홍기고명박후강건수정계통수력공유범문안무정영경성효대왕 (sunjoseongag-yeondeoghyeondogyeong-insunhuicheseong-eungmyeongheumgwangseoggyeong-gyecheonbaegeug-yung-wondonhyuuihaengsoyunhuihwajunlyeoldaejungjijeonghonghuncheolmogeonsitaehyeongchang-unhong-gigomyeongbaghugang-geonsujeong-gyetongsulyeoggong-yubeommun-anmujeong-yeong-gyeongseonghyodaewang).

Lithuanian

The longest Lithuanian word is 40 letters long:

• nebeprisikiškiakopūstlapiaujančiuosiuose - "in those, of masculine gender, who aren't gathering enough wood sorrel's leaves by themselves anymore." - the plural locative case of past iterative active participle of verb kiškiakopūstlapiauti meaning "to pick wood-sorrels' leaves" (leaves of edible forest plant with sour taste, word by word translation "rabbit cabbage"). The word is attributed to software developer / writer Andrius Stašauskas.^[28][29]

Māori

The Māori-language 85-letter place name Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikomaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is the longest place name in English-speaking countries and second longest in the world, according to Wises New Zealand Guide and The New Zealand Herald.^[30]

Mongolian

Mongolian is an agglutinative language. Words can get longer by adding suffixes. So, the longest suffixed word in Mongolian is "Цахилгаанжуулалтыхантайгаа" (tsakhilgaanjuulaltykhantaigaa) which is 26 letters long. Here is a table showing, with translations, which suffixes are added.

Ojibwe

The longest word in Ojibwe language is "miinibaashkiminasiganibiitoosijiganibadagwiingweshiganibakwezhigan" (66 letters), meaning blueberry pie. This literally translates to "blueberry cooked to jellied preserve that lies in layers in which the face is covered in bread".^[31]

Polish

Very long Polish words can be created as adjectives from numerals and nouns. For example, Dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięcionarodowościowego, 54 letters, is the genitive singular form of an adjective meaning roughly "of nine-hundred and ninety-nine nationalities". Similar words are rather artificial compounds, constructed within allowed grammar rules, but are seldom used in spoken language, although they are not nonsense words. It is possible to make even longer words in this way, for example:

Dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesiątdziewięćmiliardówdziewięćsetdziewięćdziesiątdziewięćmilionówdziewięćsetdziewięćdziesiątdziewięćtysięcydziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięcioletniego (176 letters, meaning "of 999,999,999,999 years old").

One of the longest common words is 31-letter dziewięćdziesięciokilkuletniemu – the dative singular form of "ninety-and-some years old one". Another common long word is pięćdziesięciogroszówka (23 letters), "a 50 groszy coin".

Russian

Theoretically, it is possible to create Russian words of unlimited length, for example: прапрапра...дедушка (praprapra...dedushka, great great great...grandfather).

Most likely one of the longest, originally Russian words is превысокомногорассмотрительствующий (prevysokomnogorassmotritel'stvuyushchiy), which contains 35 letters. "[It] is an adjective in the bureaucratic language of the 19th century meaning a very polite form of addressing clerks, something like Your Excellency, Your Highness, Your Majesty all together"(Guinness World Records 2003). Its dative singular form, превысокомногорассмотрительствующему (prevysokomnogorassmotritel'stvuyushchemu, with 36 letters) can be an example of excessively official vocabulary of the 19th century.

Numeral compounds can be long as well, such as Тысячевосьмисотвосьмидесятидевятимикрометровый (Tysyachevos'misotvos'midesyatidevyatimikrometrovyy), which is an adjective containing 46 letters, meaning "1889-micrometer".

Sanskrit

Sanskrit allows word compounding of arbitrary length. Nouns and verbs can be expressed in a sentence.

The longest sentence ever used in Sanskrit literature is (in Devanagari):

निरन्तरान्धकारित-दिगन्तर-कन्दलदमन्द-सुधारस-बिन्दु-सान्द्रतर-घनाघन-वृन्द-सन्देहकर-स्यन्दमान-मकरन्द-बिन्दु-बन्धुरतर-माकन्द-तरु-कुल-तल्प-कल्प-मृदुल-सिकता-जाल-जटिल-मूल-तल-मरुवक-मिलदलघु-लघु-लय-कलित-रमणीय-पानीय-शालिका-बालिका-करार-विन्द-गलन्तिका-गलदेला-लवङ्ग-पाटल-घनसार-कस्तूरिकातिसौरभ-मेदुर-लघुतर-मधुर-शीतलतर-सलिलधारा-निराकरिष्णु-तदीय-विमल-विलोचन-मयूख-रेखापसारित-पिपासायास-पथिक-लोकान्

In IAST transliteration:

nirantarāndhakārita-digantara-kandaladamanda-sudhārasa-bindu-sāndratara-ghanāghana-vṛnda-sandehakara-syandamāna-makaranda-bindu-bandhuratara-mākanda-taru-kula-talpa-kalpa-mṛdula-sikatā-jāla-jaṭila-mūla-tala-maruvaka-miladalaghu-laghu-laya-kalita-ramaṇīya-pānīya-śālikā-bālikā-karāra-vinda-galantikā-galadelā-lavaṅga-pāṭala-ghanasāra-kastūrikātisaurabha-medura-laghutara-madhura-śītalatara-saliladhārā-nirākariṣṇu-tadīya-vimala-vilocana-mayūkha-rekhāpasārita-pipāsāyāsa-pathika-lokān

from the Varadāmbikā Pariṇaya Campū by Tirumalāmbā,^[32] composed of 195 Sanskrit letters (428 letters in the roman transliteration, dashes excluded), thus making it the longest word ever to appear in worldwide literature.^[33][34]

Each hyphen separates every individual word this word is composed of.

The approximate meaning of this word is:

"In it, the distress, caused by thirst, to travellers, was alleviated by clusters of rays of the bright eyes of the girls; the rays that were shaming the currents of light, sweet and cold water charged with the strong fragrance of cardamom, clove, saffron, camphor and musk and flowing out of the pitchers (held in) the lotus-like hands of maidens (seated in) the beautiful water-sheds, made of the thick roots of vetiver mixed with marjoram, (and built near) the foot, covered with heaps of couch-like soft sand, of the clusters of newly sprouting mango trees, which constantly darkened the intermediate space of the quarters, and which looked all the more charming on account of the trickling drops of the floral juice, which thus caused the delusion of a row of thick rainy clouds, densely filled with abundant nectar."

Slovak

Traditionally, the word najneobhospodarovávateľnejšieho (31 letters) is considered as the longest Slovak word, but there are some longer artificial words. Most of them are compound adjectives in dative, instrumental or other grammatical case and derived from the iterative or frequentative verbal form or the ability adjective form (like -able).^{[35] [36]}

Artificial words, lexically valid but never used in language:

• najnerozkrasokorčuľovateľnejšieho, 33 letters
• znajneprekryštalizovávateľnejšievajúcimi, 44 letters, "through the least crystallised ones"
• znajnepreinternacionalizovateľnejšievať, 39 letters

Spanish

The longest word in Spanish is "esternocleidomastoideitis" (inflammation of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, 30 letters).^[37] Runners-up are "anticonstitucionalmente" ([proceeding in a manner that is] contrary to the constitution) and "electroencefalografistas" (specialists that do electrical scans on brains (electroencephalographists)), both 23 letters.

The word "anticonstitucionalmente" is usually considered the longest word in general use. This word can be made even longer by the addition of the absolute superlative suffix, rendering "anticonstitucionalísimamente" (i.e.: "very strongly against the constitution"). Some dictionaries (but not the RAE dictionary^[38]) removed its root word ("anticonstitucional") in 2005, causing comments about it not "being a valid word anymore" and suggesting the use of "inconstitucional" as a replacement.

Swedish

Realisationsvinstbeskattning (28 letters) is the longest word in Svenska Akademiens Ordlista. It means "capital gains taxation", and is usually shortened to Reavinstskatt (same meaning). However, Swedish grammar makes it possible to create arbitrarily long words. One such word is Spårvagnsaktiebolagsskensmutsskjutarefackföreningspersonalbeklädnadsmagasinsförrådsförvaltarens (94 letters) which means: "[belonging to] The manager of the depot for the supply of uniforms to the personnel of the track cleaners' union of the tramway company".^[39]

Tagalog

Tagalog—an agglutinative language—can make long words by adding on affixes, suffixes, and other root words with a connector.

The longest published word in the language is “pinakanakakapagngitngitngitngitang-pagsisinungasinungalingan,” with 59 letters. This compound word means “to keep making up a lie that causes the most extreme anger while pretending you are not.”^[40]

Turkish

Turkish, as an agglutinative language, carries the potential for words of arbitrary length.

Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine, at 70 letters, has been cited as the longest Turkish word. It was used in a contrived story designed to use this word.^[41][42] The word means "As if you would be from those we can not easily/quickly make a maker of unsuccessful ones" and its usage was illustrated as follows:

Kötü amaçların güdüldüğü bir öğretmen okulundayız. Yetiştirilen öğretmenlere öğrencileri nasıl muvaffakiyetsizleştirecekleri öğretiliyor. Yani öğretmenler birer muvaffakiyetsizleştirici olarak yetiştiriliyorlar. Fakat öğretmenlerden biri muvaffakiyetsizleştirici olmayı, yani muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştirilmeyi reddediyor, bu konuda ileri geri konuşuyor. Bütün öğretmenleri kolayca muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriverebileceğini sanan okul müdürü bu duruma sinirleniyor, ve söz konusu öğretmeni makamına çağırıp ona diyor ki: "Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine laflar ediyormuşsunuz ha?"

We are in a teachers' training school that has evil purposes. The teachers who are being educated in that school are being taught how to make unsuccessful ones from students. So, one by one, teachers are being educated as makers of unsuccessful ones. However, one of those teachers refuses to be maker of unsuccessful ones, in other words, to be made a maker of unsuccessful ones; he talks about and criticizes the school's stand on the issue. The headmaster who thinks every teacher can be made easily/quickly into a maker of unsuccessful ones gets angry. He invites the teacher to his room and says "You are talking as if you were one of those we can not easily/quickly turn into a maker of unsuccessful ones, right?"

Other well-known very long Turkish words are: ^[43]

• Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına means "As if you are one of those people whom we could not turn into a Czechoslovakian".
• Afyonkarahisarlılaştırabildiklerimizdenmişsinizcesine means "As if you are one of the people that we made resemble from Afyonkarahisar". (Afyonkarahisar is a city in Turkey.)

Vietnamese

Vietnamese is an isolating language, which naturally limits the length of a morpheme. The longest, at seven letters, is nghiêng, which means "inclined" or "to lean".^[44] This is the longest word that can be written without a space. However, not all words in Vietnamese are single morphemes. Indeed, nghiêng can be reduplicated as nghiêng nghiêng.

The written language abounds with compound words in which each constituent word is delimited by spaces, just like any freestanding word. Moreover, the grammar lacks inflection to mark parts of speech, and prepositions are often optional. Therefore, the boundary between a word and a phrase is poorly defined.^[45] Examples of this ambiguity include:

• Chủ nghĩa phân biệt chủng tộc ("racism"), which is composed of the words chủ nghĩa ("ideology"), phân biệt ("discriminate"), and chủng tộc ("race")
• Cơm gà xào sả ớt, which literally describes a dish of grilled chicken sauteed with lemongrass and peppers on rice
• Ông bà anh chị em, a polite pronoun composed of five kinship terms

Unlike locally coined compound words, compound words in Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary are less ambiguous, because of the use of premodifiers (as in English) as opposed to the native postmodifiers. Long Sino-Vietnamese words include bách khoa toàn thư ("encyclopedia") and thủy động lực học ("hydrodynamics").

Loanwords and pronunciation respellings from other languages can also result in long words. For example, "consortium" is côngxoocxiom (12 letters), and "Indonesia" may be left as-is or spelled In-đô-nê-xi-a (13 counting hyphens).^[46] The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Vietnam systematically respells foreign names, introducing long names into an official Vietnamese lexicon:

• Kômixacjepxkaia ("Komissarzhevskaya", 15 letters)^[47]
• Rôjơđextơvenxki ("Rozhdestvensky", 15 letters)^[48]
• Mêtơrôpôliten Ôpêra ("Metropolitan Opera", 18 letters)^[49]

Long initialisms in Vietnamese include:

• CHXHCNVN (Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam, "Socialist Republic of Vietnam", 8 characters)
• MTDTGPMNVN (Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam, "Viet Cong", 10 characters)

In modern Vietnamese, compound words can be identified fairly easily within title cased text: a morpheme that begins with a capital letter followed by one or more morphemes that begin with a lowercase letter. For example, xã hội chủ nghĩa ("socialism") is capitalized as one component within Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam.

Welsh

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, a railway station on the island of Anglesey in Wales, is the longest place name in the Welsh language. At 51 letters in the Welsh alphabet (the digraphs ll and ch are each collated as single letters) the name can be translated as "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave". However, it was artificially contrived in the 1860s as a publicity stunt, to give the station the longest name of any railway station in the United Kingdom.

Long words are comparatively rare in Welsh. Candidates for long words other than proper nouns include the following (the digraph dd is also treated as a single letter, as is ng in many instances including in the last word below):

• gwrthddatgysylltiadaeth (antidisestablishmentarianism)
• microgyfrifiaduron (microcomputers)
• tra-arglwyddiaethasant (they predominated)
• cyfrwngddarostynedigaeth (intercession)^[50] (-au can be added to form the plural)

See also

• Morphology (linguistics)
• Longest English sentence
• Jugemu

References