Comments on: Russian man reads longest word in English language

By: An Infinitude of Tortoises

An Infinitude of Tortoises — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:47:00 +0000

The longest word in the English language in common usage, I've read, is characteristically, though I've been to some neighborhoods where this is likely not the case.

By: An Infinitude of Tortoises

An Infinitude of Tortoises — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:42:00 +0000

One also runs across this as pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniosis, by which form I became acquainted with it in my youth. I find the version you cite rather long-winded, frankly.

By: An Infinitude of Tortoises

An Infinitude of Tortoises — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:26:00 +0000

And speaking of names, let us not forget about ol’ Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffvoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswessenschafewarenwohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzenvonangreifendurchihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoralternzwolftausendjahresvorandieerscheinenwanderersteerdemenschderraumschiffgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthinzwischensternartigraumaufdersuchenachdiesternwelchegehabtbewohnbarplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurassevonverstandigmenschlichkeitkonntefortplanzenundsicherfreuenanlebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurchtvorangreifenvonandererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischensternartigraum, Senior! Now there’s a long name.

By: robcat2075

robcat2075 — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 03:19:00 +0000

pfff… Warhol was doing that in the 60′s.

Impressed by commenters’ self-restraint in not mentioning Monty Python’s longest name sketch…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDPqB9i1ScY

By: robcat2075

robcat2075 — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 03:11:00 +0000

Richard Nixon had to shave three times a day.

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 09:25:00 +0000

With words like that, it’s a wonder scientists get any work done.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 19:22:00 +0000

But in German four hundred and twenty-four would be vierhundertvierundzwanzig.

By: miasm

miasm — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:36:00 +0000

I wonder at what point the lexical information density of a word passes the threshold of complexity necessary to support a conjunctive interpretation representing a virtual environment capable of supporting thinking entities which can in turn utter words of… ah nevermind.

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:57:00 +0000

The plant, not the beard. Skipping forward to 2:05 and 2:15, there’s not that big a difference. If you go in 10 minute segments, it seems to be fairly even growth.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:48:00 +0000

For kids in the UK after antidisestablishmentarianism and floccinaucinihilipilification (both in the OED but not Websters) you can try memorising the Welsh place name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (if you can work out what all those w’s and l’s are doing). Something to do on the long, boring car journey to Wales.

By: July Eccles

July Eccles — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:43:00 +0000

This recitation is so inane it may as well be of a long number, as far as I’m concerned.

By: oasisob1

oasisob1 — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:29:00 +0000

It happens suddenly around 2:09 and some seconds.

By: serpent

serpent — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:17:00 +0000

Considering this is one of the largest known proteins, this might not be possible. Of course you can construct a longer polypeptide chain, but it would not be the same. However, I’m curious, did he recite the name of human titin (34,350 aminoacid residues) or its mouse homologue (35,213 aa) or even the naked mole rat (36,507).

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 12:31:00 +0000

Some people’s reaction to antidisestablishmentarianism? Floccinaucinihilipilification.

Of course, everyone knows that the longest word in the english language is smiles.

There’s a mile between the two s’s.

By: ldobe

ldobe — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 10:24:00 +0000

noah django
Why shut up when we’re having a pleasant discourse?
(Caveat, it’s 2:24 AM in my timezone, so I’ll be sleeping, most likely if you reply)

By: noah django

noah django — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 10:18:00 +0000

nuts. i was thinking of the hyphenation rule for compound numbers, but after consulting my Harbrace, it only applies to numbers between twenty-one through ninety-nine. so 151 is “one hundred fifty-one,” but to the larger issue, you’re completely right. multiple words. i will shut up now.

By: Beanolini

Beanolini — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:32:00 +0000

I still remember it.

Me too. I also memorised Aristophanes' fricassee (183 letters), but I can't remember more than about a third of it now...

By: Shnatsel

Shnatsel — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:24:00 +0000

In fact he’s saying that word in Russian (I can tell – I’m Russian), but chemical names are almost international because they’re derived from Latin roots.

By: ldobe

ldobe — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 08:21:00 +0000

Wait, how do you write 151 in prose?
I render it as “one hundred fifty one” which is multiple words. Or a less easily contested example: 100 one hundred.

And now I’m thinking: we run out of names for orders of magnitude fairly quickly. The highest I can think of is decillion, but I’m sure there are formulaic names for higher orders of magnitude, perhaps something like uni/monodecillion, then dodecillion and so on. So I guess formulaicly generated names for numbers could be arbitrarily long, since there’s arbitrarily large numbers. But they’re not in the english lexicon any more than the Space Needle is a part of the Bejing Metropolitan Area.

Then there’s scientific notation, where big numbers can be described verbally such as “ten raised to the decillionth power.”

By: noah django

noah django — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 08:04:00 +0000

which buffers my thought: numbers are words, numbers are infinite; if a chemical compound is admissible as a candidate for the longest word, there is a large number that has more syllables, I’m sure.

By: dtakt

dtakt — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 07:42:00 +0000

Hm, no. Well, I don’t speak russian very well but most languages have translations of chemical moietys/functional groups. In swedish for example, methyl translates to metyl and thus is shorter.

By: zombiebob

zombiebob — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 06:35:00 +0000

I just had a mini-seizure listening to that

By: tré

tré — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 03:58:00 +0000

Damn! I oppose that.

By: MashTheStampede

MashTheStampede — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 03:12:00 +0000

In Russian, it occasionally sounds as if he’s saying the words for (in the male sense) “spilled” and “tired out”.

By: Gyrofrog

Gyrofrog — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 03:07:00 +0000

Yeah, I used to impress almost everyone with that one…

By: ldobe

ldobe — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 02:37:00 +0000

Precisely, if you want the longest English word, by this definition, we can compound a word that contains all of the experimentally determined as well as theorized chemical compounds thought to be in the universe while organizing them by arbitrarily discrete descriptions of every object in the universe.

Not a word any more than a recipe for cherries jubilee is a word.

By: cwthomas

cwthomas — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 01:54:00 +0000

In Mother Russia… We make those who speak out read really long and complicated English words, without water!

By: E T

E T — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 01:52:00 +0000

In Englis?

By: CCinBmore

CCinBmore — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:14:00 +0000

Never thought we’d find a good band name in this thread but there it is, “Indentured Nerditude”

By: TC Teo

TC Teo — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:01:00 +0000

cute. 2:09:22 clip is spliced and the plant instantaneously wilts