what is the most long-winded language?

[Princhester]

@Chronos

On the serious question, the Google error message doesn’t prove anything, since it was originally in English.

Plus it’s in American customer-ease. I’d say “Sorry, this website is temporarily unavailable. Please try later”.

American customer-ese: a language in which one should never say “now” when “at this time” will do.

[Geek_Mecha]

@Hari Seldon

I have heard that Hawaiin has few consonants which results in long words with lots of syllables.

The Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters, 7 of which are consonants, but it doesn’t necessarily make for longer words. For example, the state motto, “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono” translates to “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” In letter count, English is nearly twice as long.

[Chronos]

Not exactly, those are pretty standard “apology” sentences. It’s not like translating, say, the US Constitution. In my experience, Spanish is often wordier than English, but in the example it’s shorter - not because the original concept was in English (c’mon, we’re the “come back mañana” culture!) but because the translator was good. There are other standard apology Spanish sentences with equivalent meanings which could have been chosen by the translator, he picked versions which were “neutral” with respect to dialect and relatively short.

I stand corrected. I don’t know any languages other than English well enough to make that judgment.

[Mister_Rik]

I would hazard a guess that Japanese is much wordier than English, but my opinion is based on the observation that, while the typical American pop song runs between three and three and a half minutes, the typical Japanese pop song tends to be more than four minutes long, often pushing five minutes. I also note that, when I watch a subtitled Japanese music video, the singers seem to be using an immense number of words (or at least syllables) to sing a line that is, in the English translation, very short.

Of course, I’m working from a very limited sample of Japanese pop songs.

[shijinn]

@Hari Seldon

… Another point is that you cannot rely on translations (which invariably grow as there will generally be things in the source language that are harder to express in the target langauge, but would likely have been said in a slightly different way. So the question is hard to answer. …

this makes sense. i guess there’s no real answer to the OP as it would be pointless to create a conversational language where nothing is said?

so as a matter of closure … Legalese is the most long-winded language and Sanskrit is the most concise?

@Panurge

The Sanskrit Sutra-form of literature is known to be extremely concise. So concise, in fact, that …

@Colophon

Legalese has to be a contender, surely?

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threadkiller out.

[Great_Dave]

@Panurge

The word actually appears in many different forms: The verbal form is “hygge”, the noun is also “hygge”, and “hyggelig” can be both an adjectival and an adverbial form.
The term “hygge”/“hyggelig” can be applied within a range of different meanings, like “charming”, “secure & comfortable”, “warm, cozy”, “enjoyable” - basically stuff/situations that make you feel good, safe, satisfied, comfortable, etc.

Ethymologically “hygge” is from

• Old Norse: hyggja: “to think, mean; to feel satisfied”
• Swedish: hygga sig" “to become more civilized”

Boy… this is difficult. The thing is, I guess, that you practically have to be born and raised here in Denmark to know the exact possibilities of applying this term. What it means to me? - I dunno. It’s a state of mind . Try defining “zen” - it’s the same kind of refusal to be constrained in words that applies to “hygge”.

ETA: Well, now we know that Danish can be removed from the list of concise languages …

Similar to the Dutch gezellig (sp?).