Next thing, the SMILES code for Titin! Anyway, here in Portuguese we have "pneumonoultramicroscopicossilicovulcanoconiótico" as the longest word. Effectively, related to pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis; the adjective winds up being longer than the noun because of the adjectival suffix.

As a german I have to praise your pronounciation of german words, it's really good, I was surprised. Also very interesting and well made videos, hope we'll get more of them in the future.

The german word you mentioned is usually only used by schoolchildren trying to be clever at hangman. But it is true that we can chain words together like madman...and...many are somewhat proud of their neologisms(if that is even the right term in that case)

We’ve got a word “двадцатичетырёхбуквенное» in Russian. It means 24-letter-long, and it is indeed 24-letterxlong.

As a native Chinese I can share a fun fact: The name of the noodle is actually called "biang biang mian"(mian means noodle),so you have to write the character twice! And most cases even Chinese use the alphabet pinyin instead of the actual character.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (36 letters long) is one of the longest words in the dictionary - and, in an ironic twist, is the name for a fear of long words. Sesquipedalophobia is another term for the phobia.

Finland has an incredible amount of long words. My favorite example (but probably not the longest one overall) is: “Epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän” which means: “with its lack of systemization, right?” A Finnish word acknowledging the incredibly convoluted language. How wonderful.

I memorized antidisestablishmentarianism when I was in 6th grade and finally got to legitimately use it in conversation at age 39. I was giddy for about 3 days afterwards. Anyway, another favorite is dodecohexaflexigation which is what you do with a dodecahexaflexigon, which are quite amusing in a pre-internet sort of way.

The longest word in the Aussie language may be: “Didjabringyagrogalong”. It may be only a puny 21 letters long but it is one of the most commonly spoken words in the country as it is used when greeting guests as they arrive for a barbecue.

I find it incredibly ironic that you said we've probably never used the word antidisestablishmentarianism, but I actually did use it once and I felt like a genius, up to that point, it was my greatest life achievement

I'm a bit disappointed llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch didn't get a mention, the (now 2nd) longest place name in the world. It's a Welsh train station and the word essentially is the station, near the church and the red cave etc.... and was essentially named that as a up yours to the English. (I think)

The longest word in the Standard Korean Dictionary is 청자양인각연당초상감모란문은구대접, pronounced cheongjayang-in-gakyeondangchosang-gammoranmuneun-gudaejeop. It is a kind of ceramic bowl from the Goryeo dynasty. The word is 17 syllable blocks long, and contains a total of 46 hangul letters.

The longest Swedish word I can think of that I actually used almost daily while working at a local prosecutors office a few years ago is "genomsnittshastighetsmätningsprotokoll" meaning "protocol of average speed measurement" (literally averagespeedmeasurementprotocol) I've heard greenlandic have some amazingly long words... ANyway, I love your videos, just discovered them. Gold for a language nerd like myself.

Just so you know, in polish the inflexion -niego is genitive, in this case a nominative word would end with -etni or -atek. Interestingly, many Poles consider "konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka" (a girl from Constantinopole) to be the longest Polish word, but it's not actually correct, as it should be "konstantynopolitaneczka" if it actually followed the rules of diminution. Anyway, I loved your video!

Just a quick thing about the writing the Chinese character thing: your comment about stroke order is somewhat accurate, but it glosses over some important stuff. Stroke order originated to make writing characters faster and more efficient in the time when everything was handwritten, but while there are canonical stroke orders for every character (probably) most people don’t learn every specific stroke order unless you need to for school. We generally go by a set of rules that will get you a logical stroke order most of the time and only memorize edge cases. Also, for really large characters like the one shown above, it’s just composed of a bunch of separate parts that all have easy to remember stroke orders, so in all honesty, that one’s pretty easy. Generally, the younger the person you meet, the less likely they are to care about stroke order. There are a few benefits of good stroke order, namely that the proportions of the final character look right (a good example of a character that’s easy to tell if you’ve written it correctly is 必). But in the real world, the most succinct way to sum up how important stroke order is is that there are potentially a few ways to write in a logical stroke order, but there are a lot of ways to write it so wrong you make someone who doesn’t care about stroke order wanna vomit. In case you’re curious, the general rules are, off the top of my head: 1. Left over right 2. Top over bottom 3. Horizontal over vertical 4. Right to left diagonals over left to right 5. Outside over inside 6. No quick description for this one; draw the left side of the box, then the top and right side, then add the stuff in the box, then you close the box at the bottom (ex for 四, you draw the left side, then the top and bottom side, then the two lines in the middle, then the bottom). 7. For symmetrical stuff with like 1 vertical axis, draw that first, and then continue on. 8. Draw character spanning strokes last 9. Draw stuff that sorta spans the bottom left last (ok this one’s hard to describe but for a character like 这, you draw the bit at the top right first, then the bit at the bottom left) 10. Miscellaneous dots go last These rules are basically everything, but they aren’t always the most clear, so occasionally you just have to look it up and try not to get too annoyed when the stroke order is like the exact opposite of what you expected. Like a quick example is 右 and 左, which mean right and left respectively, and the top right portion of both looks exactly the same, so they should be drawn the same, right? Nope! One of them does the horizontal stroke first and one does the diagonal. There is technically a reason for it; the diagonal stroke in the left is very slightly different in calligraphy, so it’s treated as different, but they’re functionally identical in the modern era, so idk why that’s still there. Anyway, that’s enough rambling, if you’re still reading, thanks! Quick accuracy edit: the stroke inconsistency I pointed out is for Kanji (Japanese) only. In China, they use the same for both. This is a general trend; Japanese stroke orders tend to have more exceptions that come from details and tradition of writing, and China’s tend to be more uniform and consistent. Neither is necessarily better; China’s system is much easier to learn, but Japan’s shows you more of the historical development and can lead to interesting insights about the character’s history, like etymology.

In Dutch, like in German and other languages, we make compound words without spaces so word length is in principle unbounded. A nice one, not particularly long but it gets bonus points for also being a palindrome, is "koortsmeetsysteemstrook", which is a (probably hypothetical) strip used as a fever measurement system.

In French we don't usually create compound words other than with suffixes, prefixes and hyphens. The longuest word in French dictionaries is "anticonstitutionnellement" 25 letters, and for elementary school pupils it's "élastique", because you can always stretch the rubber band.

I seem to recall that in Albert Speer's memoir "Spandau" that the Allies restricted their German prisoners to a certain number of words per outgoing letter and were somewhat surprised just how long those letters could be.

My personal favorite long German word is one originating from a popular tonguebreaker story often used by people looking to train their fast talking abilities. It's "Rhabarberbarbarabarbabarenbartbabierbierbarbärbel". It's a name so it doesn't really count tho. In the story it refers to a woman named Bärbel, who works at a bar, which is known for being the favorite bar of a barber who himself is known for being the favorite barber of a few barbarians which again are known for frequently visiting another bar run by a woman called Barbera who is famous for her rhubarb cake. Here's a video of someone reading this story: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/na1mZd2S3pnPk58.html

Reminds me of one of my favorite entries from an old copy of the Guiness Book of World Records... It was the most concise word when translated into English. mamihlapinatapai which means "two people looking at each other both wanting the other to do what they both want done but refuse to do themself"

I'm so pleased that you find these extraordinary words for us. I LOVE your videos. I've learnt so much.

Great video as always Rob, but I thought that post office was the longest word as it's full of letters 🤣🤣 ...I'll get my coat, I'm leaving.

"You certainly won't find it in any dictionaries." Funny thing actually, I *did* find that word in a dictionary. It was in the back of a dictionary I got in elementary school. Right on the last page. Thanks for the long forgotten memory!

Hi I'm so glad I found your channel I'm loving all your content. Well done mate ♥

Only recently discovered your channel and subscribed. I have really enjoyed all the videos I've watched so far.😎Thanks for all your efforts.

Haha. I liked SkilometreS. Good video.

What a Great content! You must put so much energy and effort into making it. Btw All those words are hilarious xD

As ever, brilliant video, many thanks, very informative and keep it up

I am so thrilled to have found this!! Thank you!

How about the Greek word: "λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιολιπαρομελιτοκατακεχυμενο κιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοπιφαλλιδοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγα νοπτερυγών", courtesy of Aristophanes ?

In the movie, “Mary Poppins“the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” means: “something to say when you have nothing to say”. Funny 😄

Another brilliant video -Thank you!! Just loved the reference to MP JRM (what a pompous drip )

I learned how to say LLANFAIR on a Sunday drive from Chester to North Wales, with my family and nieces about 20 years ago. I can still say it and it gives me great pleasure, because studying languages gives me the most pleasure in life. Thankyou for your channel Rob , its now my favourite!

In Hindi you can conjugate nouns like German, although these words are not used, they are inexplicably part of Hindi. Some examples कंठलंगोट -> Tie -> Throat Underwear चलंतदूरभाषयंत्र -> Cellphone -> Walkable Far Conversation Device Basically you can make any mordern word, mostly technological by just describing them. As far as I remember the actual word for cricket in pure hindi is very long as it basically a general summary of the rules

It is also interesting how words become long compound words in some languages. For example there is a schoolteacher in english just as there is a Schullehrer in german. If you specify more then english just gives up and keeps the spaces between the parts. So the elementary school teacher is a Grundschullehrer in german. It is also intersting to see that in languages like german there is usually a process for new compound words, like an introductory period where the word keeps its original parts seperated by a hyphen - often done with new words imported from other languages. Like we adapted the english home office term into german as Home-Office. When people got familiar with the word then the hyphen was dropped and it became Homeoffice. There are distinctions there too. A t-shirt that is orange-red is orangerot in german but a t-shirt with orange and red stripes would be orange-rot in german. And t-shirt is also still T-Shirt in german because you don't combine words with single letters...

Your vids are usually apolitical, which is appreciated. Was disappointed that this one was not.

Titin... bursts of laughter 😂 Really fun stuff you have here 👌

A friend of mine asked once what was the longest word in Finnish and I made the argument that there is no limit. In Finnish language you can verbify any noun and that process lengthens the word. Because there's also rules to nounify a verb which lenghten the word one can theoretically string these "functions" ad infinitum. I gave him an example of doing this five times and the problem that rises is that the meaning of the word comes so convoluted that it does not describe anything that exist. So is it a word if it has no meaning?

Rob never misses!! ALWAYS great "stuff"!!!

Hello from Germany :) The next best joke word after the danube boat thingy is: Doppelheberdrehwippkran (Double Lifter Turn Swing Crane) At least thats the "Beginner" joke word I was first introduced to. Obwiously followed by Donaudampfschiff... Ty for your amazing videos. Since I found you I've been learning a lot about my own language. Besudes training my english which is my excuse for my YT addiction.

I was working in the parts department of a Renault dealer in the 1980's where all of the parts had multilingual descriptions on them when it occurred to me one of the reasons the Germans had lost the war, English was almost always the shortest description of anything while German was almost always the longest. By the end of the war the Germans must have spent hundreds of thousands of extra man hours just typing up or writing down spare parts lists for all their equipment!

Italian also likes to string its numbers out into one long written word, so for example, 802,701 (the year visited by the time traveler in "The Time Machine" would be written out as "ottocentoduemilasettecentuno."

Turkish’s longest word is Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremiyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine which has 70 letters. But the longest words in a Turkish dictionary are kuyruksallayangiller, ademimerkeziyetçilik, egzistansiyalizm and elektrosefalografi which are all 20 letters.

6:40 Its a little misleading to say that Biang is so complex that it can't be typed normally. Biang can be typed like any other character. However, nobody types it because it's not supported by any fonts. However a few years ago it was added to Unicode, so if you wanted to you could add it to a font and if your keyboard translator has it on the list you can type it.

I went to university in the 80 to doa 4 year degree in German and Biology.. it was a fashion then.. The third year was a year in Germany which is included writing a Biology dissertation in German.. The course was very chemistry heavy and I eventually figured out that i was studying the two most extreme forms of compound noun production .. I wondered briefly if i could do my dissertation in one word.. then changed to music and philosophy ..

I love your silly humour! Also the job title idea. I'm a native Hungarian but I've never heard this one. But it could be legit. Although I'm not sure it'd be written as a single word. Hungarian spelling is a nightmare but in general we tend to break such long words into smaller parts and link them with short hyphens. They still count as one word, make no mistake.

Great videos, I wish English was this interesting at school growing up, I would’ve paid more attention 😃

I'm honestly surprised at the lack of Welsh in this. Still a fun, entertaining video. Thank you for posting it!

An interesting way that you can get very long words, especially in aglutanitive languages is just to apply dimunitisation repeatedly, although dimunitisation of the same thing more than three times usually devolves into mockery. The name Jan, Jannie, Jannetjie, Jannekietjie gets you from collegue, to school boy, to mommies' bestest pre-schooler to guy at the bar who is getting too drunk and annoying.

The longest German word I know was one that I learned from a book of armoured fighting vehicles of WW1. The British invented the tank, and transported them across France disguised as water tanks. The name stuck. But the Germans called it a schuetzengrabenvernichtungpanzerkraftwagen, meaning trench annihilation assault vehicle. My brother theorised that the reason the Germans lost WW1 was because by the time you say "feuer das antischetzengrabenvernightungpanzerkraftwagenfeldhaubitzer!", you've been overrun. 😅

Just stumbled onto your channel (through the colours video, thanks to KZfaq's recommend-a-bot). Great stuff - educational and entertaining... Maybe something you've dealt with before but what is it with those english compound words such as notwithstanding or inasmuch. Or wherewithal

This channel is underrated

BTW - you can imagine that concatenating German nouns really makes Scrabble a whole different game if you allow to slacker orthodoxy a bit. My wife and I use the rule that if you can explain a word sufficiently well that the other players accept it, then it is valid. Does wonders to your score if you are lucky :-)

I like Matt Parkers video on measuring the length of words my measuring the length of words using the distance between keys on the standard qwerty keyboard (while factoring the traditional offset of the keys)

I remember there was a word on the back wall of my German classroom at school which I think (from a quick Google search) was “Vierwaldstätterseedampfshiffsfahrtsgeselschaftskapitänsmützensternlein”, roughly translated to “the star on the hat of the captain of the steamship on the four woods lake”. I remember being very impressed, but then I suppose you could extend it as far as you wanted, if there was a need for a specific word for something. The first knuckle of the little finger on the left hand of the foreman of the night shift at the factory which produces the star on the hat etc.

In German, many words one may use on a daily basis are quite long. Krankenversicherungsbescheinigung (health insurance certificate) for instance is something you could need any day of the week.

The longest word really depends on how you define a word. Most of the words you supplied consist of a whole lot of words jammed together, just like "llanfair p.g." Indonesian has some quite long words that consist of a single polysyllabic root word plus prefixes and suffixes. These are genuine words because each such word expresses a single idea, like "memperseimbangkan," a verb which means to make something "seimbang", balanced.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious video! There must be some hidden law of nature that compels bureucrats to create such monstrous words, I have even seen it manifest in station names. However, I think the Hungarian word "megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért", meaning "for your pretensions to be undesecratable" could also be a good example of such "überwords" and also notable for NOT being a compound word, just an extreme agglutinative derivation of the word "szent". I believe there was a death metal song with that as a title.

Yay! One of my favourite pastimes: long words (well, words in general, but with a tendency toward those that I find particularly long or interesting). Thanks, Rob. In secondary school English we were required to present, weekly, a word new to us gained from extracurricular reading. As an already keen sesquipedalian (14 characters), I presented *antidisestablishmentarianism* (28 characters). The rest of my class found it funny, but the teacher was less than impressed. He insisted that my next week’s word be shorter - so I presented *‘lo’,* as in ‘lo and behold’. The teacher then accused me of indulging in *floccinaucinihilipilification* (29 characters), so I further annoyed him with the name of that Welsh village *Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch* (58 characters). My first long German word was *Arbeitsunfähigkeits­versicherung* (31 characters) - disability insurance. After my years of being the class jester, no-one was surprised when I went on to study linguistics and became an editor.

In Denmark, we are also allowed to chain together any number of nouns. In practice, we rarely do more than two or three nouns because of several [obvious] reasons: - It is much easier to understand 'box·specification for elastic bands for cat·toys' than 'cat·toy·elastic·band·box·specification'. - Long words are difficult to read - Long words may not fit at the end of a line, thus making paragraphs look bad. - Because the combinations are endless, the automatic spell checker complains all the time, even if using a huge dictionary of half a million words. Any word processor has a tool to justify right and left margins. It looks good for English, but not for Danish due to the presence of long and medium-long words. A lot of young people disregard the grammar and add illegal spaces between the nouns.

One of my favorite words is "Gastrocnemius," which is the name of the big muscle in your calf. It's a great word for playing Hangman because it uses each vowel (AEIOU) once.

My favourite long German word is "Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher". It's a tool used to get a clean break in an egg shell, when you eat a cooked egg at breakfast. It's like a long metal stick with a metal bell like shaped thing attached to it. You put it on top of the egg, pull the metal bell up and let it fall down so the shell breaks where it lands and you have a neat opening. XD

I have used and read "Antidisestablishmentarianism" many times. It is not that unusual. However, the movie Mary Poppins had an even longer word, for a time used in everyday speech: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." It clocks in at 34 letters. It is in the dictionary and means extraordinarily good, wonderful.

As far as words that are fairly common in conversation, back in high school some friends and I decided that "noninterchangeable" at 18 letters was quite nice.

One of the old favourites from the TV quiz show "Catchword". Transubstantiationalistically.

I'm surprised by the Hungarian example you used in this video. Most of the time when people bring an example of an extremely long word in Hungarian, people use "Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért", which means something on the same lines as “antidosestablishmentarianism". Although this word is 44 letters in length, and there are longer words like the one you used, I belive this one is the only one officially recognized in the Hungarian dictionary. More interestingly, Hungary has comically long place names, like Hódmezővásárhely, Sátoraljaújhely, Reformátuskovácsháza, and Balatonszentgyörgy to name a few.

In Turkish, we have "muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine", meaning "as if you (formal) were one of the people who we couldn't make a person which takes away the knowledge of other people". Technically, the longest word could be an arbitrarily large number if we go by the official stance on numbers from the Turkish Language Association (which says that all numbers are one word, no matter how large), but literally everybody writes numbers as seperate words (999 would be dokuz yüz doksan dokuz instead of dokuzyüzdoksandokuz) so I wouldn't count that.

There's a place in South Africa called "Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein". It's in Afrikaans, and the English translation is "the spring where two buffaloes were shot stone-dead with one shot".

In Dutch you have the very famous: Hottentottententententoonstelling which consists out of 33 letters, but it’s not the longest as the longest is aansprakelijkheidswaardevaststellingsveranderingen which consists out of 50 letters

The problem with the Chinese "biang" is that it too appears to be made-up, or at least, has a dubious origin. If we're talking about "official" Chinese characters, there's "𪚥", which is apparently a variant form of "讋" meaning "talkative", and "𠔻", whose meaning is apparently uncertain. Both clock in at 64 strokes, and both are obscure/archaic enough to essentially never be used by anyone. The one with the most strokes that I could see someone today actually use is "齉", which has 36 strokes and describes a blocked nose. There are also a bunch of stroke-laden Traditional Chinese characters for various species of fish and/or birds, like "鸝" with 30 strokes, meaning "oriole", or "鱺" with 30 strokes, referring to the Japanese eel; but Simplified Chinese has simplified quite a lot of these to have fewer strokes. In Simplified Chinese, the next-most-complicated character I can think of that I could see someone using is "麟", with 23 strokes, as part of "麒麟", meaning "qilin" (an East Asian mythical beast).

In Persian we don't have many long words. It's quite rare to find a word with more than 10 letters. Maybe due to the fact that we have 32 letters in general and it's easier to make up shorter words. The longest word that has been found in Persian is "خودفروپاشیده‌پندارگان" which has 20 letters and means "the people who believe they have been wrecked".

5:59 this looks like the cat was stepping on the keyboard Hagen they were making the words

With the right back beat and a few times where the sound of a record being scratched back and forth this word could be a number one hit song. 😅

I’d like to offer up a nice long word in Dutch that repeats the same syllable eight times (27 letters total) but its meaning does not repeat: Lekkerkerkerkerkerkerkerker: it’s the bay window in the crypt’s church of the town of Lekkerkerk.

I found it cute the line of "smiles has a mile between the first and last letter" and so I hope this comment doesn't leave you feeling beleaguered, but that word has a league between the first two and last three letters, and a league is a bit longer than a mile ;)

I remember learning "unterhaltsammöglichkeiten" in gcse German, which I believe means "entertainment opportunities" to be used in reference to a holiday brochure describing amenities and things. I'm not a native German speaker so I'm not sure how common it is, but it's weird that I have more recollection of that word than the names of the months (which I still can't remember off the top of my head)

In Greek the longest word is considered to be "λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιοκαραβομελιτοκατακεχυμενκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοκεφαλλιοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγαοπτερύγων" from Aristophanes' comedy Ekklisiazouses (172 letters). It is actually a food receipe and description!

In Hungarian there's a long word that's not describing a specific "job title" you just mentioned, goes like this: "megkérdőjelezhetetlenségeskeitekért. It's not used so often, but it could be since questioning a nother persons sayings and deeds is such a Hungarian thing to do. It means something like "for your multiple sets of unquestionableisms". It even takes a long English word to translate it to English. There's another long word that's just made up to make a run for the longest Hungarian word: " elkelkáposztástíttalanítottátok ("you (plural) made it not to be like made with/from kale (the vegetable)). In short you could use this if a dish originally made of kale would be so messed up you wouldn't even been able to tell it's made of kale. It's not a bad thing since kale pottage (traditional Hungarian dish) is horrible in itself. And it stinks too.

This video is not intended for someone suffering "sesquipedalophobia" or even "hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia" (35 letters). Fortunately, in Ireland there shouldn't be that many because the art of photography is "grianghrafadóireacht" (20 letters).

German words are a lot of fun to string together. I made the mistake of playing "train" with one of my students (I'm a German teacher). In the game you try to make the other person end the word so you can win. Ex. The person who puts an "s" on "smiles" loses because you can't add more letters. Anyways. Two full size wall whiteboards later, we were still going :)

Excellent! I knew floccinaucipilification from school and coming from Northern Ireland I was aware of antidisestablishmentarianism ... so good to hear someone bring them out on video!

How can you have a video about long words without mentioning supercalifragilisticexpealodocious? (Love the videos, btw!)

Finnish is missing, which shares the compound technique of, for instance, German, but then there is also the agglutination (is it called like this?) of suffices and elements from grammar, which are chained into one word, where other languages need sentences. But in difference to the compound technique, which is usually just an alternative to other ways of expression, agglutination is a central feature to languages such as Finnish or Hungarian. Tottelematomuudessansakin means, e.g., "also in her disobedience" and one could add probably markers of assumption or stressing still. Other than the actual words of different languages, I find their mechanisms and reasons of chaining up words more interesting.

I did once see a German Uber noun but never managed to find it again. It meant "The German Association against the practice in the German language of concatenating multiple words into a single word having the same meaning". It'll be great if anyone out there knows it.

Once when viewing lots before an auction I discovered that a picture was really a print. I said "It's a fake!" rather loudly then realised that I had floccinaucinihilipilificated for the first and only time in my life. Thanks for these videos, they are very interesting.

A long dutch word we always used for fun: autobandventieldopjesfabriek (car tire valve cap factory?). It could be lengthened with things like -smanager (s for the combination) and other things beyond

You could make an even longer word by using the full name for Titin replacing the amino acid names with their systematic names. But at that point one could ask what the hell even is a word given that this thing would probably have more interpunction than letters.

I 'invented'(?) this one at school, in response to everyone already knowing antidisestablishmentarianism - quadrichromolithographically. Same length but (possibly) easier to say! It means, effectively, printed in the four colour method.

You cannot beat agglutinative languages as words are formed by gluing suffixes to the end of the words. And as many as you wish to describe the most peculiar and special things in only one word. So Hungarian, Finnis, Turkish etc. are limitless from this regard.

The longest I have seen was in German. It was the title of a technical paper in Telecommunications back in the 1960s. The abstract was in German, the rest fortunately had been translated. It was about what happened if people spilled coffee on an old, mechanical, telephone exchange. The English translation was 'The effect on electromechanical contacts of sugar-containing beverages'. That's 63 letters in English, I don't recall how many it was in German.

Most people don't know that Bangkok is a nickname and the real name is the longest city name in the world. The real capital of Thailand is: "Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit".

You forgot "Supercallifragilisticexptalidocious" 😂 A Dutch, fictional word I invented is "olifantendrollenhokkenschoomakerhulpjesbezemstelenhoudersetjesverkoper" (72 letters)

A parenthetic example from my first collegiate linguistics paper : "(In a famous example of [an agglutinative and suffixing morphology], a single 48-letter Turkish word requires a sentence of 18 words to be rendered in English. “Weren’t you one of the people whom we tried without success to make resemble the citizens of Afyonkarahisar?” is the sentence in English. “Afyonkarahisarlilaturamadiklarimizdanmuymustiniz” is the same sentence in Turkish!)" Of course, I thought of this immediately upon running across this video. I do enjoy your videos here quite a lot.

Longest Indonesian word I can drum up is"Kumempertanggungrentengkannyakah?" which means "Did I place collective responsibility on them?" It's broken down into the root word "tanggung renteng" (collective responsibility) and its affixes. "Ku-" means "I [performed verb]". "mem-" means in this case "to create; to cause". "per-" means in this case "to make happen". "-kan" means in this case "to cause to happen". "-nya" means in this case "them". And, finally, "-kah" is a suffix to strengthen a question.

Well, those German "übernouns" are exactly the same as the name for the protein in the beginning. They're just lists of nouns strung together, and they're theoretically unlimited. English is very much able to do the exact same thing, and the only difference is that it's more conventional in English to put spaces between the words. You can easily have a "science fiction book store chain manager training facility janitors' association", or if spelled in a German style, a "sciencefictionbookstorechainmanagertrainingfacilityjanitorsassociation". So, personally I'm quite unimpressed by the German compound words. One way of creating longer words without compounding is derivation and clitics. Word derivation is taking a word and modifying it with non-word morphemes to create more nuanced meanings. For example in English you have "teach", and adding an "er" makes it a "teacher". It's not a compound word because "er" is not a stand-alone word, so it's a derivation. Finnish has a very elaborate system of derivations and clitics. For example, you can turn "järki" (reason/sense) into "järjestää" (to organize) and that further into "järjestelmä" (system) and that further into "järjestelmällinen" (systematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällinen" (unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyä" (to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttää" (to cause something to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämätön" (incapable of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyys" (the incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellä" (with someone's incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsä" (with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään" (not even with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänkö" (not even with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic?) and that further into "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän" (I wonder if it's not even with his/her/their incapability of being caused to become unsystematic?). And all that without adding any other noun or adjective to the root word "järki".

When I was writing software documentation, we always had to allow for at least 3 times the space in tables to allow for German localization 😅

An insight into polisynthetic languages would be an asset to this enjoyable video. What's the name of that famous Icelandic volcano?

Rob, where do you learn all this stuff! Incrediblismicalidocious! 😮

Legend has it he’s still saying that chemical name to this day…

Um, I'd thought (and Wikipedia seems to confirm) that Estonian, Finnish, Ojibwe, Tagalog, Turkish, and Sanskrit are notable for having long words more or less as a matter of course. Though, perhaps oddly, Ojibwe is the only one of these I've studied. Eskimo-Aleut languages have grammatical cause for long words, too, I think.