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Post the longest word your conlang has to offer! (Or just the longest one you can be bothered to type)

Poswa has very free compounding rules, like German, so a lot of two-noun compound phrases can be optionally combined into a single word if the meaning is such that speakers are likely to think of it as a single recurring concept. e.g. bapfo kavbwap and bapfuwavbwap both mean "weather forecast". But the longest entry I currently have created in the dictionary spreadsheet is pfwuplumplolpem (15) "wastebasket, trash can", essentially a compound of pfwuplum "used diaper" (which itself is the past tense of diaper) and plolpem "covered container". Because baby diapers is the primary thing that they had to throw away when the compound word was created. The diaper pail is of course one of the most wonderful inventions of the modern era, and even trash barrels have been with us scarcely over 100 years, but a hygiene-obsessed people like the Poswobs could be excused for discovering that same basic need at a much more technologically primitive stage of development.

In Pabappa, where compounding is theoretically just as free but occurs much less often, the longest single-word entry is Mappamensampampa, the name of a month in winter. It's actually quite possible that this (or its cognate) should be the longest word in Poswa too but I never made a list of months for that language. The Poswa name of the goddess it is named after is Maptavempam, so the length would probably be the same (16).

Excel just crashed but I don't really have anything impressive to show from any of my other conlangs. Andanese in the version I used to show had very long words but they were not professionaly designed the way my current conlangs are, e.g. I could just take a whole phrase and call it a new word, even if it violated the grammar to do so. The new Andanese I'm working on now has only a few hundred words, though it could theoretically reach the stage I was at before with many very long words, as it has only 30 syllables, and therefore is fairly space-inefficient.

Nāzá has the same kind of thing as Powsa, except a lot more intense. There is pretty much no end to the possibilities of length, it just depends on how many descriptors you attach to a noun. The longest word I've ever made with this system was 109 letters long.

Right now (when the Airumali lexicon is small enough that I shouldn't really be speaking up, but I like long words so meh!) the longest word in Airumali is the neuter given name Hālrloprììlalār, which means "sword of mystical/divine/heavenly fire".

Nearly every headword in Kala is strictly 2 syllables, CVCV. That being said, some fairly long strings of affixes can be added to add or alter meaning.

Kala grammar wrote:Verbs can be marked with several suffixes to add or change meaning. Some of these can be optional and their sequence varied, but in general they should be ordered:

STEM-(SIZE)-(MOOD)-(ASPECT)-(TENSE)-(NEGATIVE)

Example:



na empahipankoyek
1SG run-DIM-able-PROG-PST-NEG
I was not able to keep jogging.

The modals and tense affixes can be added in different order to a verb to create a new meaning…their placement is not always fixed. The negative, adjectival, and plural ending are always final, while other affixes can be varied.

All this really means is that I don't know what the "longest word" in Kala is, but there are potentially some doozies.

arcomvedhoeith [arkomveðoeθʲ] 'he prevents, he hinders' is one of the longest words in Ercunic.

Nvomi can do about this big a word:

Ràkadotachikàshikatúvonrazòmámàhu.
And also are you are not all sending yourselves into a panic?

Ayčasamo has some very long verbs due to the number of affixes a root can take. For instance, panturunapafisasmos "could cut you all to pieces" is a string of seven morphemes, indicating direction, instrument, mood, tense, manner, and ergative argument - and it's possible for verbs to get even longer than that.

Halian wrote:Right now (when the Airumali lexicon is small enough that I shouldn't really be speaking up, but I like long words so meh!) the longest word in Airumali is the neuter given name Hālrloprììlalār, which means "sword of mystical/divine/heavenly fire".

I'm glad to see Ringworld's language aesthetic being picked up

Verbs in Empotle7á, like its cousin Ayčasamo (both are set in the same language family in Akana), can get pretty long with affixes and incorporated nouns. So, my go-to example is the conjugated verb látáotéwowulipétháneŋam, which roughly means, "we will make them eat the meal of crabs".

Parsing:
látáotéwowulipétháneŋam
lá-tá-oté-kowu-lipí-thá-ne-kam
PL-NC2-FUT-eat-crab{ABS}-cause-1PL{ERG}-3PL{ERG}

Kotanian verbs have the possibility to string on a host of suffixes, so you can have nyatyalòynèmiètòmabra (NIMF-fine-MAKE-MID-GFUT-COND-DISS-V; pulverize) or nôtàynòlôòmèsta (change-KFUT-REL-COND-DED-V; will as a result be having to change). It's probably possible to extend it a bit further, though it might be stretching it.


JAL

A quick glance through the Bearlandic dictionary tells me that follkbipalighyt "democracy" is currently the longest word in the dictionary.

The longest uninflected words in sájura (by number of letters) are:
ët̥ęssώrun /ətɕɛsˈsɔɾun/: 16 (composed of ët̥ë (3) + sa (5) + run (1))
ëpwassώm /əpwasˈsɔm: to forgive, to forget, to leave behind, to spill, to allow, to have forgotten, to have lost
ŋánullút̥ /ˈŋanulˈlutɕ/: potato (composed of ŋan (fruit) + lut̥ (earth.GEN))
ę́turyjęz /ˈɛtuɾɨjɛz/: yesterday (composed of ę́tur (recently) + jęz (day))

Inflections usually add about 1-3 more letters.

What I have so far (just counting the number of Latin letters, regardless of digraphs):

Liu: mneulfsneodfu-erthfùf (20) - bunny; from mneulfsneodfu (fluffy) and erthfùf (rabbit).
Lhueslue: yufbuthyuchuluqoxh (18) - coat; from yufbuth (clothes), yuchulu (human torso) and qoxh (long).
Inng: inng-pláh (8) - entrance; from inng (enter; entrance) and pláh (place); and suì-maeng (8) - spell; from suì (spell) and maeng (magic).

Dammit, I can't find the dictionaries for some of my other conlangs.

The longest word in Kannow is łpkbałonqaŗàtksneņlacsanenòw "is he going to be unskilled at medicine?".

The longest root in Kannow is ptàkstu "tree".

Everyone is posting verbs so I'll go with a noun! In the languages I'm creating for a friend (I still haven't thought of a name so it's codename is Bicish), the longest word is ocheszüzjanyó /ɔkɛzyʒɑɲɔ/, which means 'ashes'. Verbs in Bicish can get long with all the suffixes, but so far nothing as crazy as some of the others on here!

In Fenuvian the longest is just changara / 'tʃɑŋɑɾɑ/. Words tend to stick between one to two syllables in Fenuvian, though, unless you count the names. They like their names long. Charuzen'agel being one.

Then in the very first conlang I made, the longest one is a verb: yymainautel /jɨmɑj'nɔtɛl/ which means to destroy. (I need to revamp the romanization for that, though...and the entire language to be honest. :/ )

Toasterbot959 wrote:...(Or just the longest one you can be bothered to type)

Straight out of my "Grammar of Gou-Baik", last modified in 2004, a sample of the kind of things I liked to do back then:

iluktàyxdomfèrmirheiskìllàitvashòpkasdàzu
iluk-tayx-domfér-mir-heiskíl-lait-vas-hop-kas-dazu
celebration-end-period-day-NOMINALIZER-meet-year-AGENT-carry-word-town
(That is, a special celebration (iluk) after the period of two to four days (domfér) during which the yearly meeting (mirheiskíllàit = mirheiskíl 'meeting' + lait 'year') of the village representatives (vashópkasdàzu = vashópkas 'representative' ("word-carrier") + dazu 'village') took place.)

and:

Mo'íluktàyxdomfèrmirheiskìllàitvashòpkasdàzuxiemhwonge?
Aren't you (Pl.) going to the iluktàyxdomfèrmirheiskìllàitvashòpkasdàzu?

Shorter, but more reasonable examples:

itmouxiemxalie'yo 'they(f.) haven't seen them(m.) yet.'

wanam'hashaju'ou 'I will tell (it to) you immediately'

Bhashnaveekniramayodhii.
It means "Land of the Circling Sun" in Gannha. It's the longer, and more formal, name of the Beshnaliik Empire.

Longest word in Vrkhazhian is something like znilḵatʾullasim meaning "we/you/they promised to observe themselves".

Ngolu is pretty isolating but there's actually quite a lot of productive derivational processes that I can use.

I'm not really sure how to search my dictionary by word length but the longest word I can find it it at the moment is tuitieuittio which is the name of the Montezuma oropendola Psarocolius montezuma. It's onomatopoeic and is pronounced [twitʃewitsʼó]. Here's a video of one calling.

I don't think four syllables is that impressive. If we add some derivative affixes to it we could get something weird like jasombigotuitieuitioitihi which I guess would mean "(be) a group of big men who have exceedinly small Montezuma oropendolas". Can't say I'm racing to put that one in my dictionary.

transemilian is still in its formative stages but the longest word i can construct with what i have so far is a number:

Цу каӭлканцо шкакэ эігрімтёчнамғьдэкмомлъянщамфтеусулӭмгрімклэеньтлаздінь сталве.
/tsu kajɛl'kantso 'ʃkakɛ ɛigrintjoˌtʃnamʝdɛˌkmomljaɲˌʃtʃamɸtɛusuˌʎɛmgrinklɛiɲ'tlazdiɲ 'stalβe/
цу ка-ӭлкан-цо шка-кэ эі-грім-тёчнам-ғьдэ-кмом-лъян-щам-фтеу-сулӭм-грім-клэ-еньтла-здінь стал-ве
be INDEF-apple-PL two-FEM the-three-hundred.thousand-seven-ten.thousand-six-thousand-four-hundred-three-ten-nine-PART red-ACC
"Two apples of the 376,439 are red"

the more natural way to word this would be "two of the 376,439 apples are red", but that would make the number an adjective, which would mean it wouldn't have the definite article prefix (which would mean it wasn't as long as it could be). of course in practice the above sentence would not normally have the word spelled out: Цу каӭлканцо шкакэ эі376.439здінь сталве

I've probably made longer words than this a few times, and I could certainly use incorporation to make very long spot coinages, but a personal favorite that comes to mind is

wõgàʻạȟịmúyami [wʊ̃ˌgɑʔɑ̰xḭˈmujəmi]

"How about you come with and smoke weed?" (phrased as a suggestion, not a question, naturally)

ndzudzachashtipshtizhdimqodrimi /
ндзудзaчаштипштиждимгъодрими
ndzu-dza-chiha-:tU-bzh-:tU-zhdiq-mod-ri-mi
F.NEG-A>V.become-rain-V>N.AGT-N>A.many-V>N.AGT-go_under-CAUS.UNINT-REFL-2F
you [female] are not accidentally causing yourself to go underneath the cloudy sky

tho it might be possible to make a longer word with bzhashamnux 'exile' as the root

As with a number of the conlangs on this list, the verb morphology in Bol Ou is highly agglutinative. The longest verb roots I currently have in the lexicon (in terms of orthography) are ioogúbuawopoogu, "escape from, run away from" and seeseoogúubeesa, "steal." I'll use the former as an example, since it's pronounced with more syllables in casual speech. A maximally inflected form might be ioogúbuawopoogupušimaubitaki. Here's an example sentence:

Ioogúbuawopoogupušimaubitaki sa ma.
[joːˈgu.bwa.wo.poː.gu.pu.ʒi.ma.u.bi.ta.ki sa ma] (casual/rapid)
[i.oːˈgu.bu.a.wo.poː.gu.pu.ʒi.ma.u.bi.ta.ki sa ma] (formal/careful)

"Apparently he doesn't intend to run away from me."

Here, -puši marks that the verb is describing a single distinct physical action or event, -mau marks that the action represents a plan or intention, -bita is an evidential marker indicating inference or hearsay, and -ki indicates negation.

While Nisha is quite agglutinative, it doesn't really possess long words, the longest verb is "ta'abul-" (to work) and with all possible prefixes, infixes and suffixes attached, there would be something like this:

yanyuwata'abuliya
1PS.NEG.FUT.root.PRES
(I won't work)

-iy- represents the present tense, while -a is there to denote the function as a verb. with -a alone it is all set in past.

Nouns can attach several suffixes as well, but they're not that long then.

the longest single word in my proto-lang, Kā maw, is bīdung (to stalk). It's the only polysyllabic word in the language.