Long and Short Words: Language Typology 

MegaMGstudios Please write a 30 word essay.

You would either have a lower word count target or use different criteria altogether. In Russia for example it's common to use number of pages or sentences instead.

​@@pafnutiytheartist Yep here In India for us it is One page or maximum 2.

@@wierdcreations nope it is not entirely, we usually have word count rather than page required essays

@@rajarshibarman334 maybe It's a regional thing but as far as my friends and family go all of them have page requirements,in english it's word limited.

That made me laugh so hard you don't even know!

BTheHeretic In a sense of "Let me run arround aimlessly" or more like "I can do what I want, so I run arround aimlessly"? Just interested

BTheHeretic Beautiful.

MatzeGamer More in the sense "I'm a bit bored. I wonder if I should run around aimlessly to amuse myself." It's like casually wondering if it's worth the effort to run around aimlessly. It could also imply that running around aimlessly might not be the smartest thing to do in the current situation. Juoksentelisinkohan alasti jalkapallostadionilla. I wonder if I should run around aimlessly naked on a football stadium. Ehm, actually, there's also a word for "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly while naked": Viuhahtelisinkohan ... I didn't even think of that earlier :D

BTheHeretic That looks like the Scrabble-Winner of 2015 for me. Now I just need to find out, how to pronounce that. :)

wait whats the other word?

@@sjskong elkelkáposztásítottalanítottátok

just for clarification, these aren't used in everyday conversation, people came up with them for the joke of having very long words but it shows how biased the scale in the video is - Hungarian is agglutinative and yet it has words like these

Just for clarification the word about becoming a cabbage is grammatically incorrect.

@Tyrel Hansen Elkelkáposztásíthatatlanságoskodásaitokért is the word if you were wondering

He apologized for it, haha

HAABLOW

It's definitely weird how he said it: /ˈhæbɫəʊ̯/ instead of /ˈäβlo̞/.

he pronounced it as /hɑbloʊ/ but it's /ablo/

Same

Not isolated, isolating.

@@MatthewMcVeagh I stand corrected. Guessing I had a brain fart or didn’t notice autocorrect change it

Great pun, whichever version of isolat- you use.

*Laughs in Inuktitut*

Ever saw German words? Investitionsverwaltungsentwicklungsgesellschaft

@@miyuden4118 What does that mean?

@@jage1559 That means, Investment management development company.

@@miyuden4118 So not really a full sentence, huh. Viuhahtelisinkohan is a Finnish word that means "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly while naked." and it can be used as a full sentence.

+SilliS Remix lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas = Strahltriebwerkunteroffiziershilfsmechanikerstudent :) german is great too, you could stick words together as long as you want (pretty soon it gets pointless tho)

+Turun Ambartanen Oh, yeah, I also love Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung.

SilliS Remix a

why

You forgot kumarreksituteskenteleentuvaisehkollaismaisekkuudellisenneskenteluttelemattomammuuksissansakaankopahan That doesn't even mean anything but it's a nice word

translation: sons install viruses on computers

Well, I could argue it is actually pronounced "eeh o-ee ee-o-ee, eeh o-ee oo-ee-o-ee"... ... well, in ancient Greek, at least.

As a Greek, *_i approve_*

Reminds me of a sentence we have in Icelandic. Á á á á á á Á. It means "A sheep owns a sheep by the river in Á." The last, capital Á is the name of a place in Iceland

@@karlpoppins no youre wrong, both in modern n ancient greek its pronounced as ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee bc when u combine the letters ο+ι u create a binocular thats pronounced as -e- so u basically have the letter ι(e) n the binocular οι(e) = ιοί (ee)

3lapsed this deserves more likes

Does that mean you cannot eat Uralic languages? Or does it not count if you're hungary?

*out*

@3lapsed Great one 👍🏻! I’ve always thought agglutinative sounded like gluten. By the way, have there been any 3lapses?

@Rob Col Great pun! Predictable, but great. 😆👍🏻

Same problem in Norway!

I loled at Mr bike

why dont you use tone as vocal brackets?

If "skriv" is swedish for "write" then the vikings must have brought it to Ireland, in irish it's "scriobh" pronounced Skreeve

It's actually a Latin loan word into Proto-Germanic, and most likely originated already in Proto-Indo-European. According to Wiktionary: Proto-Indo-European "*skreybʰ" > Latin "scrībō" > Proto-Germanic "*skrībaną" > Old Norse "skrifa" > Old Swedish "skriva" According to Wiktionary, it was also borrowed from Latin into Old Irish "scríbaid". Edit: The conclusion is that the Romans are to blame for this one.

"Tom’s" - ha ha, and this "Tom’s" is a relic of Grammar Case by Old English - the possessive case, or Genitive Case... "all sorts of things can be coded"

También: Hablaría Hablarías Hablarían Hablaríamos Hablarían

"permítamelo", "entrégueselo", Those are my favourite Spanish wordd

I Love the past perfect name in spanish (Pretérito pluscuamperfecto del modo indicativo)

It seems complex, but the truth is that it’s only that each verb is quite complex on its own, but all that really does is attach complexity that would be elsewhere in the sentence onto one word. In Spanish, you might say “Qué harías si todos tus amigos se desaparecieron” whereas in English you would say “what would you do...”. The same amount of complexity exists, but it’s just being relocated. Chinese doesnt change words at all, but likewise you can communicate the same thing, albeit slightly differently: “你的朋友都消失的話，你就怎麼辦？” (lit your friends all disappear (marker of possible situation), what would you do then?” (I don’t have lots of confidence in either of my translations, correct me if they’re wrong)

@@narayana8249 The Spanish seems well translated, but I think you have to change the "desaparecieron" to "desaparecierAn" :) [subjunctive]

:>>

YES BEST COMMENT

This is referred to in the footnote at 0:34.

i wa sthinking of making a joke similar to this

Muvaffak-iyet-siz-leş-tir-ici-leş-tir-iver-e-me-y-ecek-ler-imiz-den-miş-siniz-cesin-ize Here is breakdown, it was harder than I thought

Pfft- We took the shortcut~

But consider the sarcastic - if only someone could’ve seen this happening - if only someone warned you - who could’ve seen this coming - what a surprise - *raise eyebrows aggressively*

@@thebestnarcissist5464 the " *Raises eyebrow aggressively* " one killed me-

+ tuh Tuhkan Perfection

i think thay could be shortened to "told you!"

Das ist was anderes. Zusammengesetzte Nomen gehören glaub ich nicht dazu was er meinte. Mehr so sachen wie un-fass-bar.

Rumi on Huh. I just learned something. I took German in high school and college, and never heard the origin of that particular word. I thought "Panzer" meant "panther", and that it was one of the classes or models of tanks. Or maybe someone had gotten really fanciful and thought a tank looked like a panther. Thanks for the lesson!

Pspaughtamus There is a german Tank called the "panther" but else those words are as connected as me and france.

Rumi on punchlines are being fired. Pspaughtamus​ german tanks often have animal names like the panther and the tiger... I am however still waiting for a submarine named Squid and a plane named Pigeon

Retro we had German tanks called "maus" or mouse in English that were huge. Also there was a plan for a war machine called "ratte" or rat that could only travel via train tracks. so yeah

DownFlex Does Hartholz designate that the wood is very hard, or that it is a hardwood?

I mean Hardwoodplatesspecialcleanerstore is semi-understandable in English

Rather that the wood is very hard. Hardwood is something different in german.

English also does that, it only doesn't write those words as one - it's just a manner of orthography.

What about Fussbodenschleifmaschienenverleih, or for that matter, Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz?

Absolutely. But unlike English, it´s much more specific so you don´t have to memorize five meanings with every word. Every language has its pros and cons 🙂

@@martavdz4972 no its not, it isnt uncommon for a word to have 10 or more meanings especially if its a verb

@@martavdz4972 what are you on about? Latin is FAR less specific than English. like disgustingly, annoyingly, inconveniently, impossibly less specific. like native Latin speakers talked about having trouble writing in Latin because it wasn't specific enough.

wait til you see Polish or ancient Greek

LMNOP! Why are you in almost every language video I find?!

@@angelodc1652 hi anjeez

@@elemenopi9239 /qʰûl-lyai’svukšei’arpîptó’ks “Being hard to believe, after allegedly trying to repeatedly inspire fear using a suspicious group of ragtag-looking clowns, despite resistance.”

I really felt that one

Same

sünnipäevanädalalõpupeopärastlõunaväsimus-core is now my aesthetic

Translating that word to Dutch, you get railbedrijfstramrailschoonmakersvakbondsledenuniformsaanvoerdepotmanager, just lacking the "belonging to" part.

Swedish doesn't really allow infinite words if you want to keep a meaning of it intact. But yes we can make long words that you can't cut in pieces and keep the meaning intact. A very simple example is that "rökfritt" and "rök fritt" are like opposites.

shrdlu or herrtoalett/herr toalett

*laughs in great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent*

would it be any different if i write the english translation without space?

Seani Wu Correct. And "a" makes an "ah" sound, so hablo sounds like "ah blow" with the "ah" syllable stressed.

***** Although a native Spanish speaker still puts a VERY small amount of H sound in words like hablo.

LawffleCopter true

***** Actually it's more like "AH-bloh", not "AH-blow"

LawffleCopter nope, we put a kind of aspiration sound of every word starting with a vowel, the H has nothing to do with it

Quite the butchering for someone that probably knows IPA

@@philiptren2792 definitely knows ipa, and made linguistics videos for ten years!

It physically hurts to hear it pronounced like that, so forgive us.

nah it's just people who speak a polysynthetic language either showing off a ridiculously long word or gatekeeping long words.

@@joahnnaibarra2282 welcome to Hearing English people butcher Spanish. You get used to it (I wouldn't have noticed it if not for the comments-)

@@commanderleo as a spanish speaking person I couldn't agree more.

JustOneAsbesto Then I'm afraid a nice meal of Sauerkraut at the köftecisi is simply out of the question :(

I googled that, and the only results are this comment and a website that reuploaded this video w all the comments.

+‫שגיא קרמן‬‎ הי! את גרה בישראל?

Jonah Safern yea

+JustOneAsbesto Impossible, how were you able to spell intolerance correctly? Impostor!

Learning Arabic was one of the hardest languages I ever chose to learn. Beautifully structured linguistically, but when you learn it you essentially have to learn 2 languages, as there is formal Arabic and then dialectical Arabic (I chose Egyptian). Most so instead of having to learn one word you would have to learn two as they were different in formal and dialect. You only spoke in dialect. You NEVER speak formal Arabic, even if you’re talking to a high authority like the president. Formal Arabic is only ever spoken on the news. So you speak dialect and read and write in formal. it was impossible for me to keep straight which word was the formal one and which word was the dialectal one. So I ended up with a weird mish mash of half Formal half dialectical Arabic and I sounded and wrote like a crazy person.

I'm a naitive Arab and believe me english is much better than Arabic. It is ten times easier to get the same idea through to people in english than it is in Arabic. English is a lot more descriptive and way more specific than arabic.

@@katiegunzz8525 Ok so I'm not necessarily interested in ever learning to speak Arabic, slightly more so than polish but only because polish really scares me, but damn do I want to hear the story behind how that happened.

Disturbed Donut one word: bebsi

@@disturbeddonut2151 I have tried to learn Arabic and I do go to Saudi Arabia almost every year but I do find that in Saudi Arabia almost everyone knows English as a second language I do really wanna learn Arabic tho. Any ideas on how I could start

K

Luuk Achterhof But they still don't equate to whole sentences, correct? In which case it would still be compounding, rather that polysynthetic.

Luuk Achterhof I love that :3

*morphemes

In theory yes, in practice not really. The most complicated it gets are words like "Weltmeisterschaftsendspielstadion" or "Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän" and those are rare exceptions, and rather trivial to break apart since they are mostly just nouns smashed together. I don't think I've ever seen a word in german that is actually a hundred letters long.

+WanderingRandomer Compound words is very common in most of the Germannic languages - you can do the same with any Scandinavian language too, for instance.

+WanderingRandomer English is one of the very few Germanic Languages that doesn't allow an infinite word build. In most of the Germanic Languages, you can build a word as long as you want from other words. My Personal Favorite: Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft.

+Mattsgeekyscience But even germans have problems understanding that words (proof: me )

Weil das Wort ist sehr lang. It is hilariously long. I'm just gonna pick out the intelligible words in it, Donau, we know as the Danube River, Dampfschiff for Steamboat, fahrts from fahren, to travel/ship, elektrizitäten for electricities, haupt, the prefix for main, betriebswerk being like plant/factory, bauunter as contractors, beamten, as in officials, and gesellschaft for company.

In Turkish this would be: Yanlışlıkla fazla yediğimden.... (3 words) In German it'd be: Weil ich ausversehen zu viel gegessen habe,.... (7 words)

technically they are all still seperate words like you seperated them right? Japanese doesnt have any spaces so only "technically" its all lumped together? (Ive been taking Japanese for 2 years and never heard anyone consider these to be just one word)

@@Hi-cl7fy i wouldnt consider them seperate words because the morphemes cant be considered words on their own. Ive never really asked if anyone thought of them as singular words before but I suppose most peiple wouldn't

@@Hi-cl7fy No, because you have to change the forms of those parts in the particular way to be able to form this sentence with this particular meaning 食べる → 食べ　(required by すぎる) すぎる ＋しまう →すぎてしまう→すぎちゃう (contracted, casual form)→すぎちゃい 　(すぎて required by しまう and ちゃい required by ました) から is the only separated word I guessed.

I think there's were the "Eskimo words for snow" myth came from? They didn't understand the concept of agglitunative languages, which is what the Eskimo-Aleut family is, and Inuktitut is a member of that language family

"Which one do you mean?" "Oh you know, the one before the one before the one before the one..." *3 alphabets later...* "...before the one before the last one! Wait, why are you a skeleton?"

I thought it only went up to antepenultimate.

I've not heard of propreantepenultimate. I guess that's using the ancient Greek for 'before'. In my own head I invented forepreantepenultimate. I guess we can go with forepropreantepenultimate for "sixth last".

If we wanted to say someone looks like someone who looks like the seventh form the last, you could say the grammatically correct monstrosity “Anteforepropreantepenultimate-looking-like.”

Buchladenkasse Buchladenkassenwart

Afrikaans is quite similar as well. Our general rule for words are, if it's one thing, it's one word. So for example, a dog house, is one physical thing, so the Afrikaans word for it is just one word (hondehok ~ lit. dog cage) The longest one I've ever seen (not accepted in the Afrikaans Woordelys en Spelreëls) can just fill a single tweet at 140 characters: Tweedehandsemotorverkoopsmannevakbondstakingsvergaderingsameroeperstoespraakskrywerspersverklaringuitreikingsmediakonferensie-aankondiginkie Translation, more or less morpheme by morpheme (note that letters in brackets aren't part of the base words/stems that form part of the compound word, but instead are joining letters that don't have any seperate meaning) Tweede = Second handse = hand (in posessive form) motor = motor verkoop(s) = sales manne = men vakbond = trade union staking(s) = strike/protest vergadering = meeting sameroeper(s) = convener toespraak = speech skrywer(s) = writer pers = press verklaring = declaration uitreiking(s) = outreach media = media konferensie = conference aankondeginkie = announcement (in diminutive form) so that word translates to (and here some words may change as context will change the translation of some morphemes to synonyms of the words used above): (little) Second hand motor salesmen trade union strike meeting convener speech writer press conference outreach media conference announcement. Note that I added little in brackets as the english equivalent of the diminutive is to add 'little' beforehand.

+Derelict Friend ahh!!! I have never read Afrikaans, but it's sooo similar to Dutch, I thought there would be more different. but take aankondigingeke. or something. in official Dutch it is aankondiging, buy in Brabants I guess we say the same as the afrikaanse form. we just don't write that because of, you know spelling rules.... and I'm actually from brabandt (just a province in the south, in the middle) so that was what I sometimes just say. we just don't make that long words, but I think it's grammatically still correct.

+Dutchik oh, it was kie, as in smaller, yeah in Dutch that would've been kje. and some words are similar when you say it, but the spelling is just like old Dutch. I hate it that we aren't allowed anymore to write things however we want, as long as it still sounds the same. writer is schrijver in Dutch so still kinda the same...

+Dutchik oh, it was kie, as in smaller, yeah in Dutch that would've been kje. and some words are similar when you say it, but the spelling is just like old Dutch. I hate it that we aren't allowed anymore to write things however we want, as long as it still sounds the same. writer is schrijver in Dutch so still kinda the same...

Well, technically not longer. But more complicated. I just wanted to make a joke.

It's joke

Steven Universe eyyy

For some reason the real gems ruby and sapphire have high pleocroism. garnets don't. Great job on the research, guys.

Tilman Baumann He did mention that there are exceptions. Besides, while ingenious and inflammable are examples of that, infamous is not. It does mean that you're famous, only for something bad, as opposed to good. He never specified what the prefix negated :P

Tilman Baumann Actually, no rules are being broken. Let me explain. 1. Inflammable Here, in- does not act as a prefix indicating negation. It is not a bound morpheme, it's part of the root: inflame. If you broke it down you'd have: inflammable --> inflame + able Furthermore, the word inflame comes from the Latin word _inflammare_ meaning to excite or set on fire. 2. Infamous This one has to do with the word origin too. It comes from Latin _infami_ meaning disgrace and dishonour. Again in- is actually part of the root and is not a prefix. It does not mean that someone who's infamous is not-famous. Breaking it down we have: infamous --> infam + ous We know what the prefix -ous means. So someone who's infamous is full of disgrace and dishonour. 3. Ingenious Again, we could figure this one out by tracing the origins of the word. We go all the way back to Latin again. The root of the word comes from Latin _ingeni_. The word could mean either (1) character, (2) natural capacity, (3) innate quality, or (4) talent. Now we have two morphemes. ingeni, the root and the suffix -ous meaning that it possesses the quality of "ingeni". Thus: ingenious --> ingeni + ous So therefore someone who is ingenious either possesses a lot of character, has natural capacity, is full of innate qualities, or has a lot of talent. I hope that clears things up. :)

Dive Like Junk You appear to have done me not just one, but several better. I will step aside, knowing that my honour was not spoiled, for you are truly the worthiest opponent of them all.

Dive Like Junk thanks guys. I wasn't actually too concerned with the exceptions. Languages are messy after all. But thanks for the great explanation. Perhaps it's less messy than I think. :)

All the languages are buggy because can't be perfect to allow the description of everything, imagination included. So they are inherently ambiguous, buggy. I always have problems to remember where I have to use 'in-' and where I have to use 'un-', and very often get stuck into searching a word that starts with 'a-' (from greek: 'without'; ex: 'amorphous' means 'without a known shape'). Plus, as said in the video, you can't just apply an 'in' or 'un' in front of something; because some of those words don't exist, are archaic or exist only in UK english but not in US english. Buggy. Because of me, not the language itself. But... buggy how? Against a reference. What reference? TV news journalists or vocabulary or both? Who keeps the reference in shape both for kids and media operators? And how i? And how many people spend their days reading the vocabolary? Bugs... plenty of bugs...

omg yes, here comes hungarian ;D

***** Tom has a degree in Linguistics, so I'd imagine he can.

***** To be fair, I'd guess Tom can read IPA, since he's uploading linguistic videos...

Valosken English Linguistics, but still Everyone should just stop correcting him when he slightly wrongly mispronounces something, it's what becomes of most of these comments.

NavyBlue I swear he has a degree in Linguistics, not just English Linguistics.

Valosken Who knows, I'll try find a source but for now, idk

This is true of Tom with 'synthetic'.

i know this is seven years old but the "os" of "hablos" is a different morpheme technically.

I got an example for isolating:i am a worker U can also say i'm a worker but in vietnamese u cant do that u can just say:tôi là công nhân u just cant shorten the "i am"

so smart he can't even pronounce hablo

+NonTwinBrothers Beause intelligence is directly proportional with how well you can pronounce foreign languages

H represents that the next vowel is blowed

Do you have any examples you'd like to share? It sounds fascinating.

i know you might never see this but i would love to know too! sounds fascinating and i'd love a resource where i could learn more about this if you might know of one if that's okay with you

Sean Gref That's the way an English speaking person would say it. In fact (and apart from pronouncing the H like a J; the H is not pronounced at all) Tom pronounced it quite well. The O is pronounced more like AW. It should be AH-blaw.

a arias The one time I don't apologise for my terrible non-English pronunciation, and of course I mess it up! Sorry.

***** lol, there's no need to apologise, but it won't harm to look for the pronunciation of a foreign language word up before publishing it. This is just a petty issue. Fantastic videos nevertheless!

a arias I'd say the final "o" is more like the sound in "box". Would you agree?

Ben McKenna Sure! (if you are British), the problem is with Americans that pronounce box almost like bax.

" going in a sort of circle" - it's just a hypothesis, the speculation only, this part of that theory.

in general, of course, the Endlish is the analytic and "isolating" language. I.E. are, in general, flexional-synthetic languages. the Old English was the same.

Iseewhatypudidthere

@@david_ga8490 it doesn't work like that :D you don't write a sentence without space between the words, It is just one word by naturally. Suffixes are not words in agglutinative languages.

@@nomnom7697 ikr it was me 8 months ago I don't even understand what I was saying

Nakakapagpabagabag ba na panatilihin ang pagsusuot ng uniporme sa paaralan?

jesusnthedaisychain *slow clap*

inconceivable

jesusnthedaisychain Have you ever heard of hyperbole?

K1naku5ana3R1ka: Have you ever heard of The Princess Bride?

jesusnthedaisychain I've seen it before, but I don't remember that line.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Tim Stahel that was almost it man. I can't explain how it is using words so I recorded myself doing it. Mine feels more opened somehow, check it out. vocaroo.com/i/s1G9qg9Z5WF2

Nah, thats just a long noun.

***** Spezialwindschutzscheibensteingschlagschutzgitterhalterungsschlüssel ;)

Lady vor Edocsil Also just a long noun.

Lady vor Edocsil unzerbrechlich. "un" + "brech" ("brechen") + "lich". That is what he was talking about.

itzJanuary Is a noun not a word?

I'm not a linguist, but I'd guess so; it's "make+ed", but since it's irregular the two morphemes merge together to become "made".

Thomas L RU-vid videos are a mostly one-sided relationship and if there is a misunderstanding, it will not be cleared up... at least not in "conversation" and oftentimes not by the person who made the video. Also +1 for Thomas with Th.

Thomas L Hardy har har.

+Molothrus Aeneus Uh, I'm pretty sure what appears to be a clusterfuck to you is found in a great deal of romance languages.

+Sofa King (edited) Well that's true.

Pretty sure their point is that they're proud of how much of a clusterfuck Spanish grammar is, which apparently gets more complicated with accents.

I was just mentioning how accent/tittles affect the time of a verb and dunno if any other language use tittles as well, correct me if I'm wrong

Molotera Legarreta Isn't a tittle the dot on the i and j? Did you mean tilde?

Malphoga Kempe That's just a compound word, it's not like prefixes and suffixes.

qorilla Yep. pretty much just a long, very precise noun. IIRC, most Indo-European languages construct words that way, and English is an exception. Where it's "jazz trumpet" in English, but "jazztrompet" in for instance Dutch.

Nmat I'd say this is just a question of orthography (spelling). It's a convention of writing, not the language itself. It could also be written like jazztrumpet in English.

See, you can do that with nearly every word in german, but I miss the ability to tell where on his scale german would fit.

Nmat okay that may be. But you have things like befragen, erfragen, befragt, gefragt etc that are the things he meant, are they? There are a lot of things that change the meaning of a word, so where is german placed?

i saw the article too

I think that french is becoming a tonal language and English too.

David Andrews how about "atomiydinenergiareaktorigeneraattorilauhduttajaturbiinirsatasvaihe"

Kusti2801 Thank you for the brain-melt!