[Lexicog] new nosey word

[Jan Ullrich]

Fritz

In Czech, my native language, probably the longest word without vowels is “scvrnkls”. It means something like “you pushed it away with you finger”. 
I think most of the Czech vowel-less words usually have about three to five consonants, but quite frequently they can be combined into sentences, similar to the famous Czech tongue twister:

Strc prst skrz krk. (Stick your finger through your throat.)

In such Czech words it is indeed “r” and “l” that are phonetically vowel-like.

Jan



Jan Ullrich
Lakota Language Revitalization Project
Indiana University, Bloomington
www.lakotalanguage.org





w nosey word
> 
> 
> Peter,
> 
> As you know Slavic languages, is it true that there are words
> in these languages that consist only of consonants (not just 
> three but 7 to 10)?
> Can you give an example? Or can someone else?
> 
> Fritz Goerling
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 09/04/2004 05:44, Mali Translation wrote:
> 
> > Are there languages that can build tapeworm words like
> > German "Automobilausstellungsleiterantragsformularvordruckspapier"
> > (= automobile exhibition director application form preprint paper)? ...
> 
> 
> I don't think Wayne's example is a tapeworm of this kind, multiple root 
> words strung together. It is more like a root with multiple affixes. In 
> agglutinative languages these can become very long, rivalling your 
> German compound, like the following Turkish example which I have 
> reconstructed from memory (and perhaps not entirely accurately)?
> 
> Çekoslovakyalılaştırılamayanlardansınızmı?
> 
> Are you one of those who could not be Czechoslovakianised?
> 
> But can anyone rival Wayne's sequence of four e's, one with an accent? I 
> heard of a language written in Cyrillic script in which there was a 
> possible word with a sequence of seven u's, but that happened because 
> the same letter was used for u and w.
> 
> > ...
> >
> >
> > I got an interesting Cheyenne word today. I think it was used 
> as a putdown
> > of someone, which makes it even funnier within the Cheyenne system of 
> > joking
> > relationships:
> >
> > Nétsêhe'êsêsóhkometséeeese. 'You have a long narrow nose flared (at the
> > nostrils).'
> >
> ...
> 
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> peter at qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
> 
> 
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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> ---
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> Verze: 6.0.648 / Virová báze: 415 - datum vydání: 31.3.2004
>  
> 



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