As long as you are just making up words, in many languages (e.g., English, German…) it seems like it should be possible to string elements together to construct arbitrarily long coinings.
I don’t know about longest, but I’ve heard the hardest word is “sorry.”
I agree. And, OP, not to oppress, but shouldn’t the person giving the word actually have spoken that language?
You can Google til doomsday and keep coming up with very long foreign to your tongue, words.
Just sayin’
I’m sorry(
) Burpo. Seems easy to me. The hard part is realizing you’re at fault or have offended.
Again, I’m sorry.
I didn’t really care for that song anyway.
Maybe “Hollywood”. One instance of it is 450 feet long.
Used to be even longer.
Ohhh! That one. I thought you meant another.
You know the one, by that group, the band had a lefty bass player and a blond girl singer. You know. That song, by them.
Im looking for long words, Im sure Wales would win for long place names
Ha!!!
The longest word in the English language is infinity-it goes on forever.
I was in Austria visiting a (Austrian) friend and some kind of commercial car drove by with an extremely long word on the side of it, and I said, “what’s that?” She didn’t know.
The longest word in English is ‘smiles’. Because there’s a … oh nevermind.
New Zealand enters the chat:
TaumatawhakatangihangaKōauauoTamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
That’s 85-letters.
Apparently it is Maori and means:
“The hilltop where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, conqueror of mountains, eater of land, traveller over land and sea, played his kōauau (flute) to his beloved.”
The Welsh one was artificially expanded in the Victorian era, anyway.
Jeez. That’s nearly a story!
In Mandarin, I’ve never yet encountered a word longer than 2 syllables, specifically, some people who have an unusual 2-syllable surname, such as Oyang or Zhuge. But someone can surely correct me.
Renminbi?
That’s three characters - ren, min, and bi. My bad - I should have clarified. But then it also gets hard to distinguish at what point a character ends and a word begins, since renminbi technically is “People’s Currency”, which is more than one word.
Unless the OP means actual words, not characters, in which case Chinese can string somewhat-long things together.
I think we should distinguish between long words that may have some application but are somewhat artificial, and long words that are (fairly) commonly used. Quite a lot of languages can string words together to extreme lengths, as for instance Rhabarberbarbarabar (etc.).
If we only look at words that are used in everyday conversation, in Dutch you have for instance spoorwegovergang (railroad crossing), bibliotheekabonnement (library subscription), luchtvaartmaatschappij (airline company), vakbondsvertegenwoordiger (labour union representative). Dutch speakers won’t blink twice at these words.