448: Long Words Feb 29, 2016

-
"Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" is a type of lung disease caused by inhaling ash and dust, and is considered the longest word in English. In German, the longest word is:
"siebenhundertsiebenundsiebzigtausendsiebenhundertsiebenundsiebzig" which is the number 777,777, because German numbers under a million can be compounded. 
Other, polysynthetic languages like Algonquin or Greenlandic can make even longer words easily; the words in those languages can express whole clauses.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1511: "I'll be home in 3 days; don't wash" Might be False Jan 31, 2019

-
Image
Check out the latest podcast on the Patreon for as little as $1: • It is very easy for misinformation to spread so long as there is a grain of truth to it, such as the line of ' let them eat cake ', which was probably never said by Marie Antoinette. Another such disputed quote is "I return in 3 (or 5 or 8) days; don't wash" said by Napoleon to his wife Josephine. This quote is more likely to have been written than that attributed to Antoinette as he did often write her love letters, but many of the original lines from which the now-famous quote could have been drawn are often contradictory or not so reliable.
Continue »

1958: Ñ in the USA Apr 25, 2020

-
English is by no means the only language lacking diacritic marks on its letters regularly, but for known for having plenty of loan words, or words that have different meaning depending upon the stress, it is strange. However, there are some exceptions, and especially with proper nouns . For instance, there are only 5 places in the USA which have an Ñ in their names, those being Cañon City, Colorado, La Cañada Flintridge, California; Española, New Mexico; Peñasco, New Mexico; and Cañones, New Mexico. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts
Continue »

995: Homophones Aug 30, 2017

-
There are some homophones in English that are spelt differently, such as 'your' and 'you re', ''they're', 'their', and 'there', 'two', 'too', and 'to', or 'due', 'do, and 'dew' , as well as many more that are spelt the same but still have different origins—called 'homographs'—such as 'limbo' referring to a dance and a synonym for 'purgatory', as well as ' bear '. All of the homophones that are not homographs listed above still do contain all of the same consonants however, but this is not always the case. As spelling does have an element of arbitrariness, and because speakers pronounce individual sounds differently depending upon the sounds that precede and follow them . Some words like 'disgust' and 'discussed' are indistinguishable, as are 'prints' and 'prince'. There will be more on this tomorrow, but if you think of any yourself...
Continue »