The World's Longest Words (English & Beyond)

✏️ A word that takes more than three hours to say.
✏️ A job title that wouldn't fit on any business card.
✏️ A lung condition whose name could leave you out of breath.
🌎 Let's look at some of the longest words in the world.
What’s the longest word in English? Or the longest word in German? Is there a ‘longest’ Chinese character? Allow me to answer these questions and more.
I'll also introduce you to bafflingly long words in Swedish, Hungarian and Polish in this world tour of long words.
==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Intro
0:20 The 3-hour word
0:43 Longest words in English
3:29 Longest words in German
5:07 Swedish, Hungarian & Polish words
6:07 Longest Chinese character?
6:46 Back to the 3-hour word
7:04 Goodbye

[@arthurhenriqued.a.ribeiro2078]

Next thing, the SMILES code for Titin! Anyway, here in Portuguese we have "pneumonoultramicroscopicossilicovulcanoconiótico" as the longest word. Effectively, related to pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis; the adjective winds up being longer than the noun because of the adjectival suffix.

[@RobWords]

It's even longer?? 🇵🇹1-0🇬🇧 Cheers for that Arthur.

[@salvadorbruschy5979]

@@RobWords If we reject this very technical word, we have "anticonstitucionalissimamente", which litterally translates as "most anti-constitutionally".

[@2020illusion]

Asparovinkialamawasaima 1 Asparagusnimadima 2 Folyamatellenor 3 Hieasbingoas 4 Crimieaban 5 Hellla 6 Yam 🍠 7

[@user-cq9bd4ws3q]

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia

[@NottheuserAVeryNormalHuman]

@@RobWords you gave anyone with Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia a heart attack with this video and comment section (Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the fear of long words)

[@meierzug3976]

As a german I have to praise your pronounciation of german words, it's really good, I was surprised. Also very interesting and well made videos, hope we'll get more of them in the future.

[@RobWords]

Thank you very much! And thanks for watching.

[@lunagrindelwald4834]

I'm German too, and your prononciation of the German words were really good (other than my English). Once, we played 'Galgenmännchen' (I don't know, what it is in English) and I used the word 'Donaudampfschifffahrts...' I forgot the word right after it. But I think, I will use this chemical word the next time...

[@crazycatlover1885]

@@lunagrindelwald4834 Hangman

[@karlheinz4098]

@@lunagrindelwald4834 it's Hangman in English

[@lunagrindelwald4834]

@@karlheinz4098 Thanks!

[@matthewiles5714]

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (36 letters long) is one of the longest words in the dictionary - and, in an ironic twist, is the name for a fear of long words. Sesquipedalophobia is another term for the phobia.

[@mkooij]

Yes this one! I was surprised it wasn't in the video!

[@DaraGaming42]

sounds like a Word for Fear of Hippoptamuses

[@EulaliaDaisy]

That second one was harder to say for me 😭

[@DavidSmith-vr1nb]

Working backwards: phobia (fear of), alio/alia (words or speech), ped (foot), sesqui (one and a half), monstro (monstrous), poto(mus) (river), hippo (horse). Fear of 18-inch long words that resemble a monstrous hippopotamus. I'm sure I divided the Greek wrong at some point.

[@babboon5764]

Given the context , is it at least worrying that 'abreviation' is fairly long word?

[@dunodisko2217]

Finland has an incredible amount of long words. My favorite example (but probably not the longest one overall) is: “Epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän” which means: “with its lack of systemization, right?” A Finnish word acknowledging the incredibly convoluted language. How wonderful.

[@oakstrong1]

'Perhaps even without his/her lack of systemisation' might be slightly more correct as the word indicates a 3rd singular pronoun. This is probably the longest non-technical word, I expect technical words being similar to Latin or Greek origin but with a few extra letters to make the sounds match Finnish pronunciation conventions.

[@joetheprogrammer0]

The most famous long Finnish word is probably "Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas" which would be "Aeroplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic officer apprentice". A word for everyday use 😅

[@mekelius]

@@oakstrong1 "it" vs "he/she/they" is up to context. Whatever that could be for this one.

[@Tyrisalthan]

In Finnish language, you could do as long compound word as you wish. It is an other matter if it actually mean anything after that, but you can do it. The real question is the longest single word, which I believe is "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän".

[@neilwilson5785]

meta

[@adamalucard4655]

As a native Chinese I can share a fun fact: The name of the noodle is actually called "biang biang mian"(mian means noodle),so you have to write the character twice! And most cases even Chinese use the alphabet pinyin instead of the actual character.

[@glendagraves1637]

Is that name "biang biang" pronounced "bang bang," or "bi-ang bi-ang" "bi-yang bi-yang"? I heard someone say "bang bang noodles" but didn't know if that was a correct pronunciation.

[@Milamberinx]

Chinese should really be adopting a phonetic alphabet, learning essentially another language for reading and writing has been shown to delay the development of Chinese children. English too should make an effort to be more phonetic, our complicated spellings also delay the development of our children, although not as much as in Chinese.

[@tanvach]

@@Milamberinx pinyin is kind of one, but I would never it’ll happen. They are very proud of their written system.

[@brent5889]

@@Milamberinx The entire Chinese language would kinda fall apart if an entirely phonetic writing system got adopted. Nearly every single character in the language has at least one homonym which is identical phonetically, so it would be a pain to decipher text. In fact, Korean (which originally used the Chinese writing system) has this very flaw, and they have considered teaching chinese characters again in schools to help with this. Even Japanese doesn't have an entirely phonetic writing system because of Kanji. Although the writing system could definitely use some revisions (like simplifying the characters), you can't treat it like a European language make it entirely phonetic. Plus, each character has its own history kinda and gives a hint to what it means, and this would be lost if a phonetic alphabet was adopted.

[@brent5889]

@@glendagraves1637 it's biang biang. One syllable each.

[@josiaboy]

I find it incredibly ironic that you said we've probably never used the word antidisestablishmentarianism, but I actually did use it once and I felt like a genius, up to that point, it was my greatest life achievement

[@Svensk7119]

I have also used it! Dang counter-Reformationists! 😉

[@donkink3114]

Antidisestablishmentarianisticism is longer. lol I have used it in a Discussion about longest word we the ones involved in the discussion had ever heard of

[@YaMumsSpecialFriend]

Peaked early, eh?🤭

[@louisa6948]

Good on you 😁Congratulations!!!

[@mjaynes288]

I have never used that word but I have heard it used several times in atheist YT videos.

[@averagedoomer]

We’ve got a word “двадцатичетырёхбуквенное» in Russian. It means 24-letter-long, and it is indeed 24-letterxlong.

[@Ademhadji653]

And there's a nother one, рентгенаэлектрокардиографические

[@christineperez7562]

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious has it beat with 34 letters.

[@fredhasopinions]

@@christineperez7562 i feel like this one wasn’t about being exceptionally long, just funny that it’s the exact same number as its meaning.

[@averagedoomer]

@@fredhasopinions exactly

[@gysxz8moago563]

@@christineperez7562 supercalicalicalivalicalicalicalicaliclaiclaivlaicliaclaivlaiclaiclaivlaivlaivlacoalcoacliclaiclaiclaiclaidfragilisticexpialidocious😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃 is longer.

[@ChiefTiff]

The longest word in the Aussie language may be: “Didjabringyagrogalong”. It may be only a puny 21 letters long but it is one of the most commonly spoken words in the country as it is used when greeting guests as they arrive for a barbecue.

[@TheMimiSard]

Strine is a great language.

[@TheSteveBoyd]

I love this!

[@MarloTheBlueberry]

did ya bring ya grogs for long? LOL

[@MarloTheBlueberry]

did ya bring ya grogs for long? LOL

[@VeganWithAraygun]

In Cleveland we have Godowndiddyendudda, "Just go-dudda next street and turn right, then godowndiddyendudda road.

[@sen.garyhart4239]

I memorized antidisestablishmentarianism when I was in 6th grade and finally got to legitimately use it in conversation at age 39. I was giddy for about 3 days afterwards. Anyway, another favorite is dodecohexaflexigation which is what you do with a dodecahexaflexigon, which are quite amusing in a pre-internet sort of way.

[@daniellewis3750]

I knew a chap going to join the army as an officer who was found of saying "Anti-dis...". Very pro-oppression expression.

[@MissingRaptor]

Thanks to you, I must now look up what a dodecahexaflexigon is and how to make one. Hexaflexagons are super fun, and now I'm learning of a new layer to them, it seems 😊

[@sen.garyhart4239]

@@MissingRaptor If you do make one I suggest making 1 long piece using a roll of cash register paper instead of trying to piece together multiple strips, it makes life so much easier. :D

[@MissingRaptor]

@@sen.garyhart4239 that's brilliant! I'll have to look into getting some 😊 I've already gotten the instructions, but have yet to get around to making one. Thanks for the idea 💡😄

[@derbazi257]

The german word you mentioned is usually only used by schoolchildren trying to be clever at hangman. But it is true that we can chain words together like madman...and...many are somewhat proud of their neologisms(if that is even the right term in that case)

[@RobWords]

Crikey, remind me never to challenge a German at hangman. The ability to conjur up a single word for a complex new concept is one of the best things about German. And ultimately, the words aren't that hard to understand because the building blocks are all there to be seen. Thanks for another cracking comment. 👍

[@michroz]

@@RobWords Maybe Germans should have introduced some character like e.g. a dash between the parts of their combined words - just for better-read-ability (Nicht-lesbarkeits-problem-überwindung?).

[@martijnvandeven7887]

Just like us Dutch people

[@iankrukow4640]

@@michroz In fact, there is a rule that compound words SHOULD BE written with a dash, if they consist of more than three single words. But obviously, it is not used in official language (these law names are really ugly ...)

[@HalfEye79]

@@michroz There would be a problem. What to de, if there is an element of a word and that element, too, is a compound word.

[@charlottawesterlund4783]

The longest Swedish word I can think of that I actually used almost daily while working at a local prosecutors office a few years ago is "genomsnittshastighetsmätningsprotokoll" meaning "protocol of average speed measurement" (literally averagespeedmeasurementprotocol) I've heard greenlandic have some amazingly long words... ANyway, I love your videos, just discovered them. Gold for a language nerd like myself.

[@Milamberinx]

I don't really understand why we pretend there's a distinction between the way German and Swedish (etc.) build up compound nouns and the way English builds up compound nouns. Just because we write it with spaces it's different? It's certainly no different on our tongues.

[@larsrons7937]

OK, so after reading a Swedish _genomsnittshastighetsmätningsprotokoll_ I have decided to invest my money in a German _Donaudampschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft._ Yes, that makes perfectly sense.

[@armwrestlingfan6804]

In Georgian, entire sentences can become an entire word and they can have crazy consonant clusters. And it's not like putting words together. There can be individual words, and when u have a whole sentence it can be entirely different words

[@handle_unknown]

The longest I remember ever actually using is "flaggstångsknoppspoleringstrasa" just a flagpole knob polishing cloth for anyone wondering. And yes I learned that word just cuz I had to polish the knob of my flagpole (it was going green) but the longest I've heard of is: Nordvästersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhållningsuppföljningssystemdiskussioninläggsförberedelsearbeten! (Northwest Lake Coast Artillery Air Reconnaissance Simulator Facility Equipment Maintenance Follow-up System Discussion Posts Preparatory Works)

[@bartoszwojciechowski2270]

​@@Milamberinx There is a difference between German and English though, albeit quite small. German still has grammatical cases, and since English has little inflection, it makes more sense to treat German compound nouns as individual words instead of merely as noun bases modified by nominal or adjectival modifiers. And that is because German in the process of compunding actually uses some inflection too, depending on the gender of the modifying element: you either build it like in English, with nothing in between, or you add a genitival interfix ("-s-" or "-(e)n"). These elements are just linking morphemes and have no meaning on their own, so it makes more sense to treat compound words as single words in German. It is even more visible in Icelandic which has retained more inflection than German, so there are, for example, more genitival endings added to the modifying noun, sometimes also involving a change to the stem (specifically vowel umlaut). But still, in every Germanic language, only the modified noun is inflected while the modifier is left intact, no matter if we add a plural suffix or a case suffix, or both.

[@RideWithRen]

The longest word in the Standard Korean Dictionary is 청자양인각연당초상감모란문은구대접, pronounced cheongjayang-in-gakyeondangchosang-gammoranmuneun-gudaejeop. It is a kind of ceramic bowl from the Goryeo dynasty. The word is 17 syllable blocks long, and contains a total of 46 hangul letters.

[@jamegumb7298]

Dictionary wise: aansprakelijkheidswaardevaststellingsveranderingen. For Dutch.

[@Aras14]

Can't you just add 입니다 (7 more letters) stating that it exists to make 청자양인각연당초상감모란문는구대접입니다? (53 letters, 20 syllable blocks)

[@RideWithRen]

@@Aras14 verbal words, much like plurals, don't officially make it longer.

[@Liggliluff]

"pronounced" is a stretch when you don't include IPA and just use the RR transcription that doesn't really explain how it's pronounced.

[@RideWithRen]

@@Liggliluff agreed. I'm biased as I live in Korea and can figure out the pronunciation by either the Hangul or McCune Reischauer transliteration. But IPA would be better. Even hangul doesn't give 100% correct pronunciation.

[@JonSneyers]

In Dutch, like in German and other languages, we make compound words without spaces so word length is in principle unbounded. A nice one, not particularly long but it gets bonus points for also being a palindrome, is "koortsmeetsysteemstrook", which is a (probably hypothetical) strip used as a fever measurement system.

[@Liggliluff]

People love to talk about how German is special. But this is normal for European languages.

[@Exgrmbl]

@@Liggliluff yeah, and it's also kind of the same in english, the real difference is just that we don't put spaces in between. As many things, it's one of those things people present as funny as quirky that turns out to be really very mundane.

[@papermonkeyminer8116]

Arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekering is another really long Dutch word, which is actually commonly used. It translates to disability insurance.

[@jakobbruhspenning]

hottentottententententoonstellingskaartjesverkoperskomitee is kind of a word

[@sheeple04]

​@@papermonkeyminer8116you can make it a bit longer by making it Arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekeringsmaatschappij. (Labour) disability insurance company.

[@sum2857]

Just so you know, in polish the inflexion -niego is genitive, in this case a nominative word would end with -etni or -atek. Interestingly, many Poles consider "konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka" (a girl from Constantinopole) to be the longest Polish word, but it's not actually correct, as it should be "konstantynopolitaneczka" if it actually followed the rules of diminution. Anyway, I loved your video!

[@RobWords]

I love this 100%. Thanks for it!

[@larsrons7937]

@@RobWords Charlotta Westerlund above mentioned a long Swedish word. Combined with your German word it all makes sense: After reading a Swedish _genomsnittshastighetsmätningsprotokoll_ I decided to invest my money in a German _Donaudampschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft._

[@stevebiffride8120]

I'm a bit disappointed llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch didn't get a mention, the (now 2nd) longest place name in the world. It's a Welsh train station and the word essentially is the station, near the church and the red cave etc.... and was essentially named that as a up yours to the English. (I think)

[@RobWords]

I was going to take the opportunity to show off that I know how to say "Llanfair..." (albeit with a dreadful English accent). I got taught to say it by a woman on BBC Radio Derby once. However, I decided having a KZbin channel with my face all over it was egotistical enough. Ask me to try it next time you see me.

[@arthurhenriqued.a.ribeiro2078]

That and Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu - "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his flute to his loved one".

[@EricaGamet]

@@RobWords Learning to say that place name was one of my few accomplishments during lockdown. It's the tiny victories, ya know? Thanks for this channel... great stuff! As an American, I like the American vs. British English content the most and all the etymology of course. I took "advanced etymology" in high school and it was one of the best classes I ever took!

[@BruceBalden]

If we allow placenames, there’s always the full name of Bangkok, which btw translates as City of Angels

[@turdferguson12]

You beat me to it!

[@name_unbekannt9976]

My personal favorite long German word is one originating from a popular tonguebreaker story often used by people looking to train their fast talking abilities. It's "Rhabarberbarbarabarbabarenbartbabierbierbarbärbel". It's a name so it doesn't really count tho. In the story it refers to a woman named Bärbel, who works at a bar, which is known for being the favorite bar of a barber who himself is known for being the favorite barber of a few barbarians which again are known for frequently visiting another bar run by a woman called Barbera who is famous for her rhubarb cake. Here's a video of someone reading this story: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nXiZY62Xrpiemc0

[@Starwarsfan3331]

Just a quick thing about the writing the Chinese character thing: your comment about stroke order is somewhat accurate, but it glosses over some important stuff. Stroke order originated to make writing characters faster and more efficient in the time when everything was handwritten, but while there are canonical stroke orders for every character (probably) most people don’t learn every specific stroke order unless you need to for school. We generally go by a set of rules that will get you a logical stroke order most of the time and only memorize edge cases. Also, for really large characters like the one shown above, it’s just composed of a bunch of separate parts that all have easy to remember stroke orders, so in all honesty, that one’s pretty easy. Generally, the younger the person you meet, the less likely they are to care about stroke order. There are a few benefits of good stroke order, namely that the proportions of the final character look right (a good example of a character that’s easy to tell if you’ve written it correctly is 必). But in the real world, the most succinct way to sum up how important stroke order is is that there are potentially a few ways to write in a logical stroke order, but there are a lot of ways to write it so wrong you make someone who doesn’t care about stroke order wanna vomit. In case you’re curious, the general rules are, off the top of my head: 1. Left over right 2. Top over bottom 3. Horizontal over vertical 4. Right to left diagonals over left to right 5. Outside over inside 6. No quick description for this one; draw the left side of the box, then the top and right side, then add the stuff in the box, then you close the box at the bottom (ex for 四, you draw the left side, then the top and bottom side, then the two lines in the middle, then the bottom). 7. For symmetrical stuff with like 1 vertical axis, draw that first, and then continue on. 8. Draw character spanning strokes last 9. Draw stuff that sorta spans the bottom left last (ok this one’s hard to describe but for a character like 这, you draw the bit at the top right first, then the bit at the bottom left) 10. Miscellaneous dots go last These rules are basically everything, but they aren’t always the most clear, so occasionally you just have to look it up and try not to get too annoyed when the stroke order is like the exact opposite of what you expected. Like a quick example is 右 and 左, which mean right and left respectively, and the top right portion of both looks exactly the same, so they should be drawn the same, right? Nope! One of them does the horizontal stroke first and one does the diagonal. There is technically a reason for it; the diagonal stroke in the left is very slightly different in calligraphy, so it’s treated as different, but they’re functionally identical in the modern era, so idk why that’s still there. Anyway, that’s enough rambling, if you’re still reading, thanks! Quick accuracy edit: the stroke inconsistency I pointed out is for Kanji (Japanese) only. In China, they use the same for both. This is a general trend; Japanese stroke orders tend to have more exceptions that come from details and tradition of writing, and China’s tend to be more uniform and consistent. Neither is necessarily better; China’s system is much easier to learn, but Japan’s shows you more of the historical development and can lead to interesting insights about the character’s history, like etymology.

[@digitaldazzle5836]

Wow. Nice copy and paste.

[@gary_rumain_you_peons]

When I first started studying Chinese back in the 70s, I was following the stroke order rules and producing chicken scratchings for the first few months until I went to see my martial arts instructor about a problem I was having. He clued me into writing Chinese characters "properly" in a calligraphic style. After that, my handwriting improved remarkably. One of the things I noticed was that you could run strokes into each other in a "correct" order (much as you see in calligraphic examples in Chinese paintings). So, for example, 我, while having 7 strokes, could be written in two strokes of the pen by joining up the smaller ticks with the main strokes. I don't recall any particular exceptions to this. So it worked as a general rule.

[@jimfus6833]

I seem to recall that in Albert Speer's memoir "Spandau" that the Allies restricted their German prisoners to a certain number of words per outgoing letter and were somewhat surprised just how long those letters could be.

[@ragnkja]

English-speakers seem to have forgotten how English can form compound words the same as any other Germanic language. Where do they think they got words like "mousemat" or "breakfast"?

[@gh8447]

@@ragnkja That's true, but English doesn't string _entire sentences_ , or more correctly (possibly) entire titles, together into a single word.

[@sarahtonen4873]

is the memoir better than the ballet?

[@Exgrmbl]

@@gh8447 It does though. The only difference is that you guys put spaces inbetween.

[@toomanyopinions8353]

​@Exgrmbl yes, and a space indicates a separation. "Into" is one word, "in to" is two words and is used in a different way grammatically. What do you think a space means?!

[@laurentsalomonoriginals3438]

In French we don't usually create compound words other than with suffixes, prefixes and hyphens. The longuest word in French dictionaries is "anticonstitutionnellement" 25 letters, and for elementary school pupils it's "élastique", because you can always stretch the rubber band.

[@WGGplant]

yep. its mostly because of French and Spanish influence that we don't compound words as much in modern English. although many compound words are still around its nothing like it is with other Germanic languages. Nowadays many English words are derived from French, Spanish, or Italian. I think it's pretty cool tbh. It tells a lot about western Europe's geography and history. Pretty interesting.

[@peterlively8269]

Reminds me of one of my favorite entries from an old copy of the Guiness Book of World Records... It was the most concise word when translated into English. mamihlapinatapai which means "two people looking at each other both wanting the other to do what they both want done but refuse to do themself"

[@b.g.9257]

Excellent! 😀

[@topilinkala1594]

A friend of mine asked once what was the longest word in Finnish and I made the argument that there is no limit. In Finnish language you can verbify any noun and that process lengthens the word. Because there's also rules to nounify a verb which lenghten the word one can theoretically string these "functions" ad infinitum. I gave him an example of doing this five times and the problem that rises is that the meaning of the word comes so convoluted that it does not describe anything that exist. So is it a word if it has no meaning?

[@ragnkja]

All Germanic languages (including English, though they seem to have forgotten that) can do this too, as well as putting different words together. So if you can think of a concept, you can make up a word for it.

[@leaf9974]

"You certainly won't find it in any dictionaries." Funny thing actually, I *did* find that word in a dictionary. It was in the back of a dictionary I got in elementary school. Right on the last page. Thanks for the long forgotten memory!

[@RobWords]

Fantastic! I would love to see it.

[@gljames24]

The rotary club dictionary had that.

[@spandandasgupta5773]

In Hindi you can conjugate nouns like German, although these words are not used, they are inexplicably part of Hindi. Some examples कंठलंगोट -> Tie -> Throat Underwear चलंतदूरभाषयंत्र -> Cellphone -> Walkable Far Conversation Device Basically you can make any mordern word, mostly technological by just describing them. As far as I remember the actual word for cricket in pure hindi is very long as it basically a general summary of the rules

[@MrKotBonifacy]

_"Cellphone -> Walkable Far Conversation Device"_ - that's pretty much like German "telephone", "Fernsprechapparat" ("the apparatus for 'far' talking" - that is, that's the "old style" one, as a cellphone in German is called "ein/der Handy", and it's a noun), or TV set/ telly, "Fernsehapparat" ("the apparatus for 'far' seeing"). PS: _Throat Underwear"_ - that reminds me of that silly "formal merchandise name" for a tie the communist officials back in late '70s were so fond of inventing, at it went something like "ornamental male appendage/ overhang" ("zwis męski ozdobny"). Now, when you see names like that you certainly start to wonder, "are they really so dumb, or just plain stupid"? And no prize for guessing what kind of jokes it inspired... ;-)

[@Chris-mf1rm]

Pretty much what we do in English, except we use Greco-Latin words for such things and not ‘native’ English words.

[@christophstahl8169]

It is also interesting how words become long compound words in some languages. For example there is a schoolteacher in english just as there is a Schullehrer in german. If you specify more then english just gives up and keeps the spaces between the parts. So the elementary school teacher is a Grundschullehrer in german. It is also intersting to see that in languages like german there is usually a process for new compound words, like an introductory period where the word keeps its original parts seperated by a hyphen - often done with new words imported from other languages. Like we adapted the english home office term into german as Home-Office. When people got familiar with the word then the hyphen was dropped and it became Homeoffice. There are distinctions there too. A t-shirt that is orange-red is orangerot in german but a t-shirt with orange and red stripes would be orange-rot in german. And t-shirt is also still T-Shirt in german because you don't combine words with single letters...

[@blumoogle2901]

An interesting way that you can get very long words, especially in aglutanitive languages is just to apply dimunitisation repeatedly, although dimunitisation of the same thing more than three times usually devolves into mockery. The name Jan, Jannie, Jannetjie, Jannekietjie gets you from collegue, to school boy, to mommies' bestest pre-schooler to guy at the bar who is getting too drunk and annoying.

[@paulmargett9360]

Great video as always Rob, but I thought that post office was the longest word as it's full of letters 🤣🤣 ...I'll get my coat, I'm leaving.

[@RobWords]

That"s a BEAUT Paul. No shame in that.

[@MrKotBonifacy]

_"as it's full of letters"_ - does it have some vowels or just consonants? "G'mornin', I'd like to buy a vowel"... ;-)

[@selianboy8508]

Post office, whilst certainly full of letters, cheats... after all it doubles its chances by the use of two words! 😂😆😆🤣🤣🤣

[@TheZodiacz]

Reminds me of a South Australian joke related to a town name. The smallest post office in Australia is at Orroroo, cos it's only got 2 letters. boom-tish!

[@hardal201]

Turkish’s longest word is Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremiyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine which has 70 letters. But the longest words in a Turkish dictionary are kuyruksallayangiller, ademimerkeziyetçilik, egzistansiyalizm and elektrosefalografi which are all 20 letters.

[@gadget348]

I was working in the parts department of a Renault dealer in the 1980's where all of the parts had multilingual descriptions on them when it occurred to me one of the reasons the Germans had lost the war, English was almost always the shortest description of anything while German was almost always the longest. By the end of the war the Germans must have spent hundreds of thousands of extra man hours just typing up or writing down spare parts lists for all their equipment!

[@ahseaton8353]

There is a rule of thumb for "localization" of software user interfaces (translation to other languages). Add at least 20% to the English length. Those bigger buttons, labels and text boxes can wreak havoc with your nice screen layouts.

[@gadget348]

@@ahseaton8353 it's odd you should mention that, for the last year and a half I've been writing an Android app for CNC machinists! I have no current plans to make it multilingual though. Years ago a machine shop I was working for bought a new toy which came with a French user manual, even though I understand hardly a word of French I had little difficulty understanding it as lots of technical words are similar and the rest I'd become accustomed to from working in the Renault dealer.

[@mjouwbuis]

I don't know about car parts, but I find English parts names for assemblies and mechanical parts of consumer electronics often undescriptive and unhelpful. I could see an army losing a war over insufficient or wrong supplies.

[@gadget348]

@@mjouwbuis perhaps the sweet spot is Italian...

[@gary_rumain_you_peons]

That's something I'd long noticed with instruction manuals. Of the European languages, English was invariably the shortest. Of course, if it's a more international manual, then Chinese is usually shorter than English and sometimes Japanese is too (but not always).

[@pavlos617]

How about the Greek word: "λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιολιπαρομελιτοκατακεχυμενο κιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοπιφαλλιδοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγα νοπτερυγών", courtesy of Aristophanes ?

[@skakirask]

What does it mean?

[@pavlos617]

@@skakirask It is from Aristophanes’s comedy “Assemblywomen” (c. 392 BC) and basically is a dish with many ingredients. Have a look at the following: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lopado%C2%ADtemacho%C2%ADselacho%C2%ADgaleo%C2%ADkranio%C2%ADleipsano%C2%ADdrim%C2%ADhypo%C2%ADtrimmato%C2%ADsilphio%C2%ADkarabo%C2%ADmelito%C2%ADkatakechy%C2%ADmeno%C2%ADkichl%C2%ADepi%C2%ADkossypho%C2%ADphatto%C2%ADperister%C2%ADalektryon%C2%ADopte%C2%ADkephallio%C2%ADkigklo%C2%ADpeleio%C2%ADlagoio%C2%ADsiraio%C2%ADbaphe%C2%ADtragano%C2%ADpterygon

[@talastra]

Of course it would be Aristophanes.

[@paulflute]

I went to university in the 80 to doa 4 year degree in German and Biology.. it was a fashion then.. The third year was a year in Germany which is included writing a Biology dissertation in German.. The course was very chemistry heavy and I eventually figured out that i was studying the two most extreme forms of compound noun production .. I wondered briefly if i could do my dissertation in one word.. then changed to music and philosophy ..

[@talastra]

"I wondered briefly if i could do my dissertation in one word" ... Degree granted.

[@Alexander-mw1ek]

In German, many words one may use on a daily basis are quite long. Krankenversicherungsbescheinigung (health insurance certificate) for instance is something you could need any day of the week.

[@legaleagle46]

Italian also likes to string its numbers out into one long written word, so for example, 802,701 (the year visited by the time traveler in "The Time Machine" would be written out as "ottocentoduemilasettecentuno."

[@yoshiiinblack]

My favourite long German word is "Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher". It's a tool used to get a clean break in an egg shell, when you eat a cooked egg at breakfast. It's like a long metal stick with a metal bell like shaped thing attached to it. You put it on top of the egg, pull the metal bell up and let it fall down so the shell breaks where it lands and you have a neat opening. XD

[@walterspielkamp957]

I have one of these at home, with the work carved along the stick. And It works!

[@barrettdecutler8979]

This is one of the most German things I have ever heard, a manufactured, mechanical device designed to take a simple, everyday task and make it cleaner and more reliable.

[@talastra]

Gib mir meinen Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher!

[@allanhansen481]

In Denmark, we are also allowed to chain together any number of nouns. In practice, we rarely do more than two or three nouns because of several [obvious] reasons: - It is much easier to understand 'box·specification for elastic bands for cat·toys' than 'cat·toy·elastic·band·box·specification'. - Long words are difficult to read - Long words may not fit at the end of a line, thus making paragraphs look bad. - Because the combinations are endless, the automatic spell checker complains all the time, even if using a huge dictionary of half a million words. Any word processor has a tool to justify right and left margins. It looks good for English, but not for Danish due to the presence of long and medium-long words. A lot of young people disregard the grammar and add illegal spaces between the nouns.

[@PixelBytesPixelArtist]

6:40 Its a little misleading to say that Biang is so complex that it can't be typed normally. Biang can be typed like any other character. However, nobody types it because it's not supported by any fonts. However a few years ago it was added to Unicode, so if you wanted to you could add it to a font and if your keyboard translator has it on the list you can type it.

[@RCake]

BTW - you can imagine that concatenating German nouns really makes Scrabble a whole different game if you allow to slacker orthodoxy a bit. My wife and I use the rule that if you can explain a word sufficiently well that the other players accept it, then it is valid. Does wonders to your score if you are lucky :-)

[@nalinea18]

My husband and I do the same in Finnish Scrabble. We also accept words from dialects (many Finnish dialects have distinct words in addition to a different spelling/sound) IF and ONLY IF neither can figure out a Standard Finnish word for said thing. So mainly local traditional foods and other stuff like that, but we do it to remind ourselves that "Standard Finnish" was made up by smushing all the dialects together and calling it a day.

[@ayior]

Old comment but I want to add my favorite german scrabble strategy: elongating words. Say someone has laid down "Leiter", I can make it "Schulleiter", points counted for the whole word! Idk if this is standard or not.

[@ThinkAboutVic]

In Turkish, we have "muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine", meaning "as if you (formal) were one of the people who we couldn't make a person which takes away the knowledge of other people". Technically, the longest word could be an arbitrarily large number if we go by the official stance on numbers from the Turkish Language Association (which says that all numbers are one word, no matter how large), but literally everybody writes numbers as seperate words (999 would be dokuz yüz doksan dokuz instead of dokuzyüzdoksandokuz) so I wouldn't count that.

[@theharper1]

The longest German word I know was one that I learned from a book of armoured fighting vehicles of WW1. The British invented the tank, and transported them across France disguised as water tanks. The name stuck. But the Germans called it a schuetzengrabenvernichtungpanzerkraftwagen, meaning trench annihilation assault vehicle. My brother theorised that the reason the Germans lost WW1 was because by the time you say "feuer das antischetzengrabenvernightungpanzerkraftwagenfeldhaubitzer!", you've been overrun. 😅

[@RJDViewer]

I have used and read "Antidisestablishmentarianism" many times. It is not that unusual. However, the movie Mary Poppins had an even longer word, for a time used in everyday speech: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." It clocks in at 34 letters. It is in the dictionary and means extraordinarily good, wonderful.

[@talastra]

Where have you read and in want context did you use antidisestablishmentarianism? I'm inclined to imagine it used to describe an antidisestablishmentarianist, but the point of view that is against the disestablishment of Arianism (or any generic -ism) seems contextually unlikely to me. Unless you mean read or used in the case of mentioning long word, in which case you should have said pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

[@oliverscratch]

One of my favorite words is "Gastrocnemius," which is the name of the big muscle in your calf. It's a great word for playing Hangman because it uses each vowel (AEIOU) once.

[@exvagoergosum]

Well, we do that in only 6 letters in french : oiseau (= bird) 😉

[@keystoneenglish8423]

Haha. I liked SkilometreS. Good video.

[@RobWords]

What do you reckon it means? noun [pl.]: Multiple measures of exceptional ability. ...you'd need to swap the r and the e though, I suppose.

[@edderiofer]

The problem with the Chinese "biang" is that it too appears to be made-up, or at least, has a dubious origin. If we're talking about "official" Chinese characters, there's "𪚥", which is apparently a variant form of "讋" meaning "talkative", and "𠔻", whose meaning is apparently uncertain. Both clock in at 64 strokes, and both are obscure/archaic enough to essentially never be used by anyone. The one with the most strokes that I could see someone today actually use is "齉", which has 36 strokes and describes a blocked nose. There are also a bunch of stroke-laden Traditional Chinese characters for various species of fish and/or birds, like "鸝" with 30 strokes, meaning "oriole", or "鱺" with 30 strokes, referring to the Japanese eel; but Simplified Chinese has simplified quite a lot of these to have fewer strokes. In Simplified Chinese, the next-most-complicated character I can think of that I could see someone using is "麟", with 23 strokes, as part of "麒麟", meaning "qilin" (an East Asian mythical beast).

[@RobWords]

Bravo 👏 This is brilliant, thank you. Agreed, biang is artificial. But unlike some of my examples, it is at least in use!

[@VictoriaKimball]

It is beyond my brain how anyone learns to write in Chinese. Is it all just memorization or are there some rules?

[@edderiofer]

@@VictoriaKimball Pretty much all just memorisation, in much the same way one has to memorise English spelling. Certain patterns of strokes (radicals) crop up often, though, and these can be chunked. In many cases, the radical either indicates the pronunciation of the character or is related to the meaning of the character, so one can often guess what's required. So it's not really as much work as having to memorise 10 random strokes per character. (For computer input, one can just input the pinyin and the computer will give them an option between the possible characters. Or if one knows the stroke order, one can type that in instead. Or one can use Cangjie, which inputs by radicals.)

[@VictoriaKimball]

@@edderiofer ... Wow, thank you for this interesting explantation!

[@nathanlaoshi8074]

@@VictoriaKimball There are some rules: most characters have 2 elements: the "radical" which suggests the meaning, and another element (don't know the name) which suggests the pronunciation. In addition, most Chinese words are comprised of 2 characters, which helps to clear up phonetic ambiguity. I'm only at the lower-intermediate stage of studies, but I can assure you that it is 1) very possible and 2) a pain in the ass to memorize the 3,000-odd characters necessary to read a newspaper.

[@joannamelton-butler7644]

I am so thrilled to have found this!! Thank you!

[@rais1953]

The longest word really depends on how you define a word. Most of the words you supplied consist of a whole lot of words jammed together, just like "llanfair p.g." Indonesian has some quite long words that consist of a single polysyllabic root word plus prefixes and suffixes. These are genuine words because each such word expresses a single idea, like "memperseimbangkan," a verb which means to make something "seimbang", balanced.

[@technl75]

I’d like to offer up a nice long word in Dutch that repeats the same syllable eight times (27 letters total) but its meaning does not repeat: Lekkerkerkerkerkerkerkerker: it’s the bay window in the crypt’s church of the town of Lekkerkerk.

[@RobWords]

That is glorious!

[@geralddemeulemeester4961]

Also in Dutch : hottentottententententoonstelling which means exposition of hottentotten tents.

[@maxberan3897]

How come there's a bay window in a crypt?

[@lohphat]

@@maxberan3897 Even in death, the Dutch have style and good taste.

[@jharris947]

Only recently discovered your channel and subscribed. I have really enjoyed all the videos I've watched so far.😎Thanks for all your efforts.

[@ronycampbell251]

I'm so pleased that you find these extraordinary words for us. I LOVE your videos. I've learnt so much.

[@racheljensen1823]

German words are a lot of fun to string together. I made the mistake of playing "train" with one of my students (I'm a German teacher). In the game you try to make the other person end the word so you can win. Ex. The person who puts an "s" on "smiles" loses because you can't add more letters. Anyways. Two full size wall whiteboards later, we were still going :)

[@scarlettM007]

In Dutch you have the very famous: Hottentottententententoonstelling which consists out of 33 letters, but it’s not the longest as the longest is aansprakelijkheidswaardevaststellingsveranderingen which consists out of 50 letters

[@MrCadoc]

Hi I'm so glad I found your channel I'm loving all your content. Well done mate ♥

[@quietman482]

As ever, brilliant video, many thanks, very informative and keep it up

[@crossfittxms1]

In the movie, “Mary Poppins“the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” means: “something to say when you have nothing to say”. Funny 😄

[@MetaverseAdventures]

35 characters and a missed opportunity in this video for a British person.

[@eekee6034]

@@MetaverseAdventures Yes. It was the longest word in the dictionary when I first took an interest in the subject.

[@none8680]

In Persian we don't have many long words. It's quite rare to find a word with more than 10 letters. Maybe due to the fact that we have 32 letters in general and it's easier to make up shorter words. The longest word that has been found in Persian is "خودفروپاشیده‌پندارگان" which has 20 letters and means "the people who believe they have been wrecked".

[@user-yn8yj6vb9k]

In Greek the longest word is considered to be "λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιοκαραβομελιτοκατακεχυμενκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοκεφαλλιοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγαοπτερύγων" from Aristophanes' comedy Ekklisiazouses (172 letters). It is actually a food receipe and description!

[@loganlebrasseur7704]

Ok, I'm gonna correct one error, it's 185 letters.

[@sydhenderson6753]

I@@loganlebrasseur7704 I've seen that transliterated into English.

[@julihamilton854]

There's a place in South Africa called "Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein". It's in Afrikaans, and the English translation is "the spring where two buffaloes were shot stone-dead with one shot".

[@spottyhag]

I learned how to say LLANFAIR on a Sunday drive from Chester to North Wales, with my family and nieces about 20 years ago. I can still say it and it gives me great pleasure, because studying languages gives me the most pleasure in life. Thankyou for your channel Rob , its now my favourite!

[@DanTheCaptain]

I'm surprised by the Hungarian example you used in this video. Most of the time when people bring an example of an extremely long word in Hungarian, people use "Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért", which means something on the same lines as “antidosestablishmentarianism". Although this word is 44 letters in length, and there are longer words like the one you used, I belive this one is the only one officially recognized in the Hungarian dictionary. More interestingly, Hungary has comically long place names, like Hódmezővásárhely, Sátoraljaújhely, Reformátuskovácsháza, and Balatonszentgyörgy to name a few.

[@RobWords]

These are beautiful! Thanks

[@DanTheCaptain]

@@RobWords Thanks, the rough translation of "Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért" is something along the lines of "for your (pl.) repeated actions of making something impossible to be unholy". It's pretty much useless, but I heard a pastor use smaller derivative words multiple times in a sermon, and was genuinely impressive.

[@comandanteej]

​@@RobWords Actually (not sure if it is still actual after a year but nevermind) your example is a compound of multiple nouns and should be written with a dash. It still counts as one word but I am not sure it qualifies. The example by Daniel K is truly a single word (one root with lots of suffixes and a prefix). There is no technical limit in Hungarian as suffixes may repeat (eg. possessive and plural suffixes: fiai, one's sons, fiaié: one's sons' thing, fiaiéi: one's sons' things, fiaiéié: one's sons' things' etc...)

[@EdviTibor]

And the most classic, but meaningless one: elkelkáposztástalaníthatatlanságoskodásaitokért

[@DanTheCaptain]

@@EdviTibor Another classic

[@thangys]

What a Great content! You must put so much energy and effort into making it. Btw All those words are hilarious xD

[@RobWords]

Thank you! And I do, so thanks so much for taking the time to watch.

In Hungarian there's a long word that's not describing a specific "job title" you just mentioned, goes like this: "megkérdőjelezhetetlenségeskeitekért. It's not used so often, but it could be since questioning a nother persons sayings and deeds is such a Hungarian thing to do. It means something like "for your multiple sets of unquestionableisms". It even takes a long English word to translate it to English. There's another long word that's just made up to make a run for the longest Hungarian word: " elkelkáposztástíttalanítottátok ("you (plural) made it not to be like made with/from kale (the vegetable)). In short you could use this if a dish originally made of kale would be so messed up you wouldn't even been able to tell it's made of kale. It's not a bad thing since kale pottage (traditional Hungarian dish) is horrible in itself. And it stinks too.

[@szabados1980]

I love your silly humour! Also the job title idea. I'm a native Hungarian but I've never heard this one. But it could be legit. Although I'm not sure it'd be written as a single word. Hungarian spelling is a nightmare but in general we tend to break such long words into smaller parts and link them with short hyphens. They still count as one word, make no mistake.

[@afrankel]

Another crazy long hungarian world is megszentsegtelenithetetlensegeskedeseitekert.

[@szabados1980]

@@afrankel Yeah but it makes no sense. Nobody would ever use it, there's no context for it.

[@davidcousins3508]

Hungarian in general is a nightmare …the impossible language I call it !

[@19Szabolcs91]

@@szabados1980 What do you mean by that? :D Imagine some satanists wanting to defile some religious artifacts, but those have some security systems build in, making it impossible. So the satanist would curse at the object, like "I will take revenge on you for your tendency to be impossible to be defile." - "Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért bosszút fogok állni rajtatok". Happens every day.

[@szabados1980]

@@19Szabolcs91 Stop kidding these poor foreigners. Nobody ever says this. It isn't even a good joke.

[@RaRa-eu9mw]

I found it cute the line of "smiles has a mile between the first and last letter" and so I hope this comment doesn't leave you feeling beleaguered, but that word has a league between the first two and last three letters, and a league is a bit longer than a mile ;)

[@janefinlayson6027]

Another brilliant video -Thank you!! Just loved the reference to MP JRM (what a pompous drip )

[@pooterist]

Just stumbled onto your channel (through the colours video, thanks to KZbin's recommend-a-bot). Great stuff - educational and entertaining... Maybe something you've dealt with before but what is it with those english compound words such as notwithstanding or inasmuch. Or wherewithal

[@MarioRodriguez-ow9rl]

This video is not intended for someone suffering "sesquipedalophobia" or even "hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia" (35 letters). Fortunately, in Ireland there shouldn't be that many because the art of photography is "grianghrafadóireacht" (20 letters).

[@BigMooscles69]

This channel is underrated

[@apopodo]

jsut found your channel and I never expected to laugh so hard with a vocabulary video! I love it

[@JFBassett2050]

Rob never misses!! ALWAYS great "stuff"!!!

[@davidhenry2927]

I did once see a German Uber noun but never managed to find it again. It meant "The German Association against the practice in the German language of concatenating multiple words into a single word having the same meaning". It'll be great if anyone out there knows it.

[@talastra]

Did you mean die Deutschsprachigewortzusammenfügungsgegenpraxisvereinigung

[@davidhenry2927]

@@talastra Thanks for the reply, as a non-German speaker I'll take your word for it! BTW Google translate failed miserably to translate back to English. Thanks again.

[@talastra]

Google translate probably failed to construct a word in German *wink*@@davidhenry2927

[@Eddi.M.]

Finnish is missing, which shares the compound technique of, for instance, German, but then there is also the agglutination (is it called like this?) of suffices and elements from grammar, which are chained into one word, where other languages need sentences. But in difference to the compound technique, which is usually just an alternative to other ways of expression, agglutination is a central feature to languages such as Finnish or Hungarian. Tottelematomuudessansakin means, e.g., "also in her disobedience" and one could add probably markers of assumption or stressing still. Other than the actual words of different languages, I find their mechanisms and reasons of chaining up words more interesting.

[@pilvikkiitisso5010]

Eikös tuo olisi Hänen tottelemattomuudessaankin

[@Eddi.M.]

@@pilvikkiitisso5010 Kyllä, olet todennäköisesti oikeassa. -t- sanassa "tottelemattomuus" oli kirjoitusvirhe (mutta tottelematon). "hänen" ja "myös" voivat olla erillisiä, mutta halusin näyttää periaatteen.

[@jonnysongs]

Your vids are usually apolitical, which is appreciated. Was disappointed that this one was not.

[@krisztianpovazson4535]

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious video! There must be some hidden law of nature that compels bureucrats to create such monstrous words, I have even seen it manifest in station names. However, I think the Hungarian word "megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért", meaning "for your pretensions to be undesecratable" could also be a good example of such "überwords" and also notable for NOT being a compound word, just an extreme agglutinative derivation of the word "szent". I believe there was a death metal song with that as a title.

[@stephenspackman5573]

Um, I'd thought (and Wikipedia seems to confirm) that Estonian, Finnish, Ojibwe, Tagalog, Turkish, and Sanskrit are notable for having long words more or less as a matter of course. Though, perhaps oddly, Ojibwe is the only one of these I've studied. Eskimo-Aleut languages have grammatical cause for long words, too, I think.

[@topilinkala1594]

If you look at a Finnish text and it's English translation side by side you'll find that the letter count is almost the same but word count favors English more. So for example Ihmisoikeusneuvosto is Human Rights Council. Both have 17 letters but the English one is three words and the Finnish one one.

[@stephenspackman5573]

@@topilinkala1594 Sure. Human languages are more similar than not in terms of overall coding density. Words may grow long, but they do it because they are conveying useful information (or because the orthography is not well matched to the current state of the language, of course, but that's another matter). At the other extreme, Mandarin introduces explicit redundancy (adjacent pairs of morphemes with very similar meanings, repeated verbs, several kinds of mandatory collocations) to compensate for its basic strategy being a bit over-efficient to be reliable in a realistic environment.

[@3dVisualist]

I 'invented'(?) this one at school, in response to everyone already knowing antidisestablishmentarianism - quadrichromolithographically. Same length but (possibly) easier to say! It means, effectively, printed in the four colour method.

[@barrettdecutler8979]

That is awesome! I have never heard a sí gle word for "four-color printing" before. I would suggest changing "quadri" to "tetra" since the former is Latin, and the latter is Greek, and most of your word is elements of Greek origin. I usually just say CMYK to talk about tetrachromolithography, as a habit from years of using PhotoShop color modes.

[@3dVisualist]

@@barrettdecutler8979 glad you like it, thanks for the ancient language correction.

[@freebozkurt9277]

You cannot beat agglutinative languages as words are formed by gluing suffixes to the end of the words. And as many as you wish to describe the most peculiar and special things in only one word. So Hungarian, Finnis, Turkish etc. are limitless from this regard.

[@2712animefreak]

You could make an even longer word by using the full name for Titin replacing the amino acid names with their systematic names. But at that point one could ask what the hell even is a word given that this thing would probably have more interpunction than letters.

[@martijnvandeven7887]

please no

[@pauljmorton]

Well, those German "übernouns" are exactly the same as the name for the protein in the beginning. They're just lists of nouns strung together, and they're theoretically unlimited. English is very much able to do the exact same thing, and the only difference is that it's more conventional in English to put spaces between the words. You can easily have a "science fiction book store chain manager training facility janitors' association", or if spelled in a German style, a "sciencefictionbookstorechainmanagertrainingfacilityjanitorsassociation". So, personally I'm quite unimpressed by the German compound words. One way of creating longer words without compounding is derivation and clitics. Word derivation is taking a word and modifying it with non-word morphemes to create more nuanced meanings. For example in English you have "teach", and adding an "er" makes it a "teacher". It's not a compound word because "er" is not a stand-alone word, so it's a derivation. Finnish has a very elaborate system of derivations and clitics. For example, you can turn "järki" (reason/sense) into "järjestää" (to organize) and that further into "järjestelmä" (system) and that further into "järjestelmällinen" (systematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällinen" (unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyä" (to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttää" (to cause something to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämätön" (incapable of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyys" (the incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellä" (with someone's incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsä" (with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään" (not even with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänkö" (not even with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic?) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän" (I wonder if it's not even with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic?). And all that without adding any other noun or adjective to the root word "järki".

[@A-A_P]

The estonian system kind of works the same, it just usually has shorter and/or simpler words/particles for a start and also has lost a few grammatical operations, these personal or question affixes for example.

[@tobio.5968]

That is a common trait of agglutinative languages as opposed to fusional languages like german or english. Fun fact: Klingon is also an agglutinative language.

[@Musketeer009]

My eyes just fell out of my head!

[@rais1953]

Now that's what I call genuinely long words although they represent what in another language would be a phrase.

[@edonveil9887]

Makes sense but somehow I feel järki is playing a minor part in the last elaboration.

[@veggiet2009]

I like Matt Parkers video on measuring the length of words my measuring the length of words using the distance between keys on the standard qwerty keyboard (while factoring the traditional offset of the keys)

[@jamesbicknell8376]

I remember there was a word on the back wall of my German classroom at school which I think (from a quick Google search) was “Vierwaldstätterseedampfshiffsfahrtsgeselschaftskapitänsmützensternlein”, roughly translated to “the star on the hat of the captain of the steamship on the four woods lake”. I remember being very impressed, but then I suppose you could extend it as far as you wanted, if there was a need for a specific word for something. The first knuckle of the little finger on the left hand of the foreman of the night shift at the factory which produces the star on the hat etc.

[@AncientPurpleDragon]

Most people don't know that Bangkok is a nickname and the real name is the longest city name in the world. The real capital of Thailand is: "Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit".

[@SuperMagnetizer]

Thank God for nicknames!

[@rais1953]

Yes but when I was there the car number plates just had "krungthep maha nakhon" across the top. I've inserted spaces but in Thai there are spaces only between sentences. It means "Krungthep Great City" and "Krungthep" is actually two words, meaning "City of Angels". Bangkok is just one part of Krungthep.

[@alecsnider3225]

When I was younger and heavily into AD&D I made up the 31-letter word "neonecromantasticalitaciousness", supposedly meaning "of or dealing with the abhorred new practice of reanimating the dead." It never really caught on.

[@bobsteele9581]

One of the old favourites from the TV quiz show "Catchword". Transubstantiationalistically.

[@omerefe8955]

Because there is a lot of affix to add to the end of the words in Turkish, The longest Turkish word ever said without putting different words together is "muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine" with 70 letters. (Sorry it's a very complex word that is nearly impossible to translate.)

[@artworkby]

My favourite has to be ‘Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia’ which apparently means ‘the fear of long words. 🙂

[@martybartfast1]

Yep! I had to learn how to say that as a narrator in a short film called 'Phobia'. Just imagine if you suffered from it; you could not tell anyone that you had it.

[@bazza945]

I thought it looked like 'a fear of hippopotamuses'.

[@martybartfast1]

@@bazza945 And well you should be fearful... average of 500 people a year 'die' from those huge, lovely, dangerous and 'bum' troubled beasts. Why they poop so vigerously is an interesting tail/tale. Enjoy the rabbit hole. m

[@barrettdecutler8979]

That word is funny and cute but also kind of stupid. It's like the name of that one Welsh town where it was intentislly made long for the sake of being long. If you were to make a term for the fear of long words using the standard model of (Greek name of scary thing) + "phobia", it would be something like "megalonymophobia" or "megalogophobia". Still long, but not crazily long. I think it was probably made by up the same jerks who put an /s/ in "lisp" or made "abbreviation" such a long word.

[@jaypaans3471]

You forgot "Supercallifragilisticexptalidocious" 😂 A Dutch, fictional word I invented is "olifantendrollenhokkenschoomakerhulpjesbezemstelenhoudersetjesverkoper" (72 letters)

[@christineperez7562]

Yes Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious how can he forget that one.

[@PanglossDr]

The longest I have seen was in German. It was the title of a technical paper in Telecommunications back in the 1960s. The abstract was in German, the rest fortunately had been translated. It was about what happened if people spilled coffee on an old, mechanical, telephone exchange. The English translation was 'The effect on electromechanical contacts of sugar-containing beverages'. That's 63 letters in English, I don't recall how many it was in German.

[@mikejones-go8vz]

Great videos, I wish English was this interesting at school growing up, I would’ve paid more attention 😃

[@monicacall7532]

Floccinaucinihilipilification rocks! When I taught gifted and talented 10-11 year old students(aka very accelerated learners) there was a poem in a literature and poetry book that we used that had this word in it, and the little dears decided that this would become our class password and Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” was the class manifesto. Hahaha! Having visited Iceland and Hungary I can attest to the fact they have the longest words for such English words as “exit”, a restroom with a changing station for babies, etc. It’s pretty wild! I’ve asked Danish and Norwegian friends how and why their words lost so many letters in comparison to Icelandic. Their response is usually, “We wised up and realized that less is more when spelling words.” If Icelandic is the closest thing to old Norse it’s a good thing that most of the stories were verbally transmitted from one generation to the next. Imagine how many sheep would have to give their all in order for the stories to be written down when many of the words had 10 or more letters! That’s an enormous amount of sheep.

[@Dicska]

The Danish and Norwegian language/spelling reform was clearly led by sheep then. Also, 'exit' is not that bad in Hungarian ('kijárat' - 'j' pronounced like 'y'); chances are they translated emergency exit ('vészkijárat') into just 'exit'. Some other words may look surprisingly long only because they are just compound words, such as 'tonsil'->'orrmandula' ( 'orr' + 'mandula' == 'nose' + 'almond', yes, don't ask) or 'cork'->'parafadugó' ('parafa' + 'dugó' == 'corkwood' + 'plug').

[@seannolan9857]

Vellum does not come sheep, I mean cheap.

[@sandrafaith]

When I was writing software documentation, we always had to allow for at least 3 times the space in tables to allow for German localization 😅

[@ragnkja]

I can think of two reasons: German spelling, and not using foreign words if there's a way of making a native compound word to say the same thing more clearly.

[@roxelanaorc4065]

Hello from Germany :) The next best joke word after the danube boat thingy is: Doppelheberdrehwippkran (Double Lifter Turn Swing Crane) At least thats the "Beginner" joke word I was first introduced to. Obwiously followed by Donaudampfschiff... Ty for your amazing videos. Since I found you I've been learning a lot about my own language. Besudes training my english which is my excuse for my YT addiction.

[@robertbilling6266]

Once when viewing lots before an auction I discovered that a picture was really a print. I said "It's a fake!" rather loudly then realised that I had floccinaucinihilipilificated for the first and only time in my life. Thanks for these videos, they are very interesting.

[@toranshaw4029]

Legend has it he’s still saying that chemical name to this day…

[@carlybishop6160]

I am so glad you used that word. I spent so long trying to say floccinaucinihilipilification over one summer. I love Jacob Rees-Mogg. I do like "antidistablishmentarism" but I just think of Blackadder Three and Hugh Laurie pretending he can't saying it with "Anti-distictly-minty..." lol

[@petergaskin1811]

It is rather typical of the monstrous self-regard of the man that Mogg would be the one to use the word in Parliament.

[@TommyTindall]

I learned to spell Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis back in middle school and it's been my favorite ever since, followed closely by Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (the fear of long words).

[@annisea]

A long dutch word we always used for fun: autobandventieldopjesfabriek (car tire valve cap factory?). It could be lengthened with things like -smanager (s for the combination) and other things beyond

[@zarajday]

As a former Political Science student, Disestablishmentarianism was certainly a real term I've seen in a textbook, though I'll give you that it is a mouth full and will probably get you more looks of bewilderment than mutual comprehensibility.

[@jacool2565]

You forgot the world's shortest longest word! Nghiêng means to lean and it's the longest word in the Vietnamese language.

[@ruedigernassauer]

That is due to the Vietnamese writing convention to write every syllable apart. Vietnamese is very good at making composed words. And it has many two-syllable words that cannot be broken into the meanings of their syllables. Most prominently this is the case with the loanword "cà phê" (coffee).

[@jacool2565]

@@ruedigernassauer Thank you, I did not know that!! So interesting

[@bigbrowntau]

I'm honestly surprised at the lack of Welsh in this. Still a fun, entertaining video. Thank you for posting it!

[@RaymondHng]

_Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch_ It took me a couple of years to learn to say that and I can now say it in four seconds flat.

[@Tribe_Productions]

I remember learning "unterhaltsammöglichkeiten" in gcse German, which I believe means "entertainment opportunities" to be used in reference to a holiday brochure describing amenities and things. I'm not a native German speaker so I'm not sure how common it is, but it's weird that I have more recollection of that word than the names of the months (which I still can't remember off the top of my head)

[@Agadr]

I LOVE THIS CONTENT ❤️❤️❤️ But I find it hard for my genZ brain to get addicted to your vids, I thereby suggest you include more transitions, colors, and catchy music I WANT YOUR STUFF TO REACH FURTHER

[@bazza945]

You omitted "interpretive dance".

[@dougmorgan6819]

In high school you could send valentines via the school paper and paid by the word. So being a sesquipedalianist, I sent a friend a valentine of random long words (which were harder to find without the internet). I spent $0.50 and it took up several inches of the column.