Word with most long vowels only?

[alice]

A quick quickie:

What is the longest word anybody knows which is (1) in a language which has phonemic vowel length and (2) has only long vowels?

[Gulliver]

Eey-ore in my (non-rhotic) English, I'd say. I don't think this is strictly phonemic; they are long vowels, though.

[Bob Johnson]

If you allow silliness, you can prefix anything in Japanese with an unbounded number of 超 /tɕoː/ "super".

Seriously though, there are long compounds like 方向係数 /hoːkoːkeːsuː/ "directional coefficient", prefixes like the above, and suffixes like 系 /keː/ "type", so you should be able to put something together.

Though it might not be as impressive as Donauschifffahrtetcetcetc.

[Culden]

I think my accent in Japanese has improved a lot, but vowel length is the one thing that trips me up still (not a lot, but yeah, sometimes I end up not having long vowels where I need them)

[Ulrike Meinhof]

What is the longest word anybody knows which is (1) in a language which has phonemic vowel length and (2) has only long vowels?

Bonus points if the language has phonemic consonant length and the word has only long consonants as well. Finnish, anyone?

[Tropylium]

From Finnish, saappaassaan "in his/her boot" seems like a good contender for a non-compound.

Could be extended by compounding with adjectivs ending in /UUs/, but I can't think of any non-contrived examples that keep up with the pattern (only stuff like kyykkyys "crouchedness").

Syys- "autumnal" works nicely, tho.

[Timmytiptoe]

I think Finnish has kookkaammuussyytteellään.

[alice]

I think Finnish has kookkaammuussyytteellään.

6 long vowels and 5 geminate consonants; that's pretty impressive. What does this word mean? Could you provide an analysis?

[Timmytiptoe]

I got it from here: The weird phrases from real languages thread

It means 'his/her/its accusation of being bigger (adessive)'. I don't know anything about Finnish though, so I couldn't verify it.

[Nortaneous]

Hungarian has újjáépítéséről, but I'm not sure what it means. I probably got that from the weird phrases thread.

And then there's Estonian.

[----]

Hungarian has újjáépítéséről, but I'm not sure what it means. I probably got that from the weird phrases thread.

I would say it means something to the effect of "about the reconstruction project's..."

[Ser]

I asked a Hungarian user at another forum ("Kenny"), and he gave me this explanation:

Hi, sure.
újjáépítéséről ~ about its rebuilding

új-já-épít-és-é-ről
new-to-build-"ing"-its-about, more or less

újjáépít: rebuild, "újjá" literally meaning something like "into new", -vá/vé is a suffix used to describe change, used with certain verbs normally, like "naggyá vált/lett" - it became big...as you can see, it also undergoes assimilation, taking on the phonetic value of the consonant following it and creating a geminate, same thing happens in most/all cases, that's why you have "újjá" and not "újvá"
épít is simply "build"

-ás/és is a pretty productive suffix used to create nouns based on verbs
épít (builds) -> építés (building)
alszik (sleeps) -> alvás (sleep)
repül (flies) -> repülés (flying)
etc.

-e (újjáépítésE): it's basically just a possessive suffix, denoting what would be expressed in English using the pronoun "its/his/her"..turns into "é" when another suffix follows

-ról/ről: it can mean off of but more often than not its meaning is "about"
e.g. "Miről beszélsz?" - "What are you talking about?" (what-about talk-you)

Hope I could help. I can't really think of anything we'd actually use that's longer but such words certainly exist, it's just too early in the morning for me to find anything longer.

[Niedokonany]

You can come across Czech words with like three long vowels in a row (e.g. kázání "sermon"), I don't know whether it gets more extreme than this, you would have to ask a speaker.

[Basilius]

Latin appears to be somewhat unexpectedly very tolerant to chained long vowels.

E. g. īnfīnītīvī - 5 instances of the same long vowel in a row.

[Skomakar'n]

Hungarian has újjáépítéséről, but I'm not sure what it means. I probably got that from the weird phrases thread.

And then there's Estonian.

I've only studied Hungarian for a few weeks now, but the longest I can think of, just like that, would be számítógép (computer), and there are several case endings with long vowels that could be attached onto that, and in the translative, we can even geminate that final consonant; számítógéppé.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

This thread needs audio.

[Mr. Z]

Latin appears to be somewhat unexpectedly very tolerant to chained long vowels.

E. g. īnfīnītīvī - 5 instances of the same long vowel in a row.

Yeah, Latin has really long words for an ancestor of Romance languages. I remember how I realize it's a language I don't want to study when I first saw, in my Latin book, the word "adolescentulorum". And they say only Native Americans have words like this.

[Skomakar'n]

Latin appears to be somewhat unexpectedly very tolerant to chained long vowels.

E. g. īnfīnītīvī - 5 instances of the same long vowel in a row.

Yeah, Latin has really long words for an ancestor of Romance languages. I remember how I realize it's a language I don't want to study when I first saw, in my Latin book, the word "adolescentulorum". And they say only Native Americans have words like this.

"of adolescence"?

[Niedokonany]

Latin appears to be somewhat unexpectedly very tolerant to chained long vowels.

E. g. īnfīnītīvī - 5 instances of the same long vowel in a row.

Common Slavic was probably at least as tolerant as Latin (sth like *děvicami would be [dæ:wi:t͡sʲa:mi:] in all likelihood)

[Qwynegold]

I got it from here: The weird phrases from real languages thread

It means 'his/her/its accusation of being bigger (adessive)'. I don't know anything about Finnish though, so I couldn't verify it.

It's something like:

kookkaammuus-syyttee-llä-än
largeness-accusation-INST-3SG

or:

kookkaa-mm-uus-syyttee-llä-än
large-SUPL-NMZ-accusation-INST-3SG

Idk. Finnish can be so hard to analyze sometimes. @_@ The same suffix is used for both the adessive and instrumental, but I can't think of how one would use this word in adessive case.

[Timmytiptoe]

Yeah, Latin has really long words for an ancestor of Romance languages. I remember how I realize it's a language I don't want to study when I first saw, in my Latin book, the word "adolescentulorum". And they say only Native Americans have words like this.

"of adolescence"?

-orum is GEN.PL, and adulescentulus means "young man" so "of young men".

[Ser]

Latin appears to be somewhat unexpectedly very tolerant to chained long vowels.

E. g. īnfīnītīvī - 5 instances of the same long vowel in a row.

Yeah, Latin has really long words for an ancestor of Romance languages.

Hey, Romance languages have pretty long words too, also due to derivation just like īn-fīnīt-īu-us.

[Mr. Z]

Latin appears to be somewhat unexpectedly very tolerant to chained long vowels.

E. g. īnfīnītīvī - 5 instances of the same long vowel in a row.

Yeah, Latin has really long words for an ancestor of Romance languages. I remember how I realize it's a language I don't want to study when I first saw, in my Latin book, the word "adolescentulorum". And they say only Native Americans have words like this.

"of adolescence"?

My book said it's "of the young men".
In the same sentence there was another frightening word: "oppugnaverat". And a few lines below that we have "abalienaverimus" and "conservaveramus".

[alice]

In the same sentence there was another frightening word: "oppugnaverat". And a few lines below that we have "abalienaverimus" and "conservaveramus".

This is leading me to wonder "what is the shortest word in Latin which features all the letters of the alphabet", but there probably isn't one.