What's the Longest Word? | Otherwords 

I'm today years old when I found out PODCAST is a broadcast for your IPOD...

Definitely didn't expect a Keyser-Soze-style twist in a linguistics video but I'm totally here for it.

This series is much more imaginative than I expected.

This host does a great job of taking a concept that they're getting into the weeds on and actually keeping it interesting through their mannerisms and speech patterns, instead of it being drab and boring.

I know that under every single "long word" video there will be german speakers parading our long words and it's getting annoying but there is one I have to mention: "Die Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung", the historical event that took place in Austria in 2016 where the rerun of the run-off of the election of the federal president had to be postponed. I just feel like it needs to be known that that happened and that's what it's called.

"Words are the clothes that thoughts wear..." Samuel Butler...ALSO...."When I use a word', Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." Lewis Carroll

Commenting for the algorithm because this show is a treasure 💎

Loving this new generation of PBS. I was a avid watcher as a child at my grandparents homes and it's exciting to see they are keeping with the times and hiring fresh young talent to produce quality content. Great job guys!

The ideas presented in this video are why I always laugh at this exchange in the Avengers: Thor: Where we have to go is Nidavellir. Drax: That's a made-up word! Thor: All words are made-up.

2:24 My favorite conflation of space/no space is setup vs. set up. "Set up" being a verbal phrase meaning to prepare; "setup" being a noun meaning either the way to prepare/arrange or the preparation/arrangement itself. Every time I want to leave out the space, no matter the usage.

This could have just listed the longest words known, but you made it so much more entertaining and so much more informative. I really enjoy this series.

I just realized that words are basically memes: humanmade, shared sociocultural entities that evolve and change through usage and over time.

Come for the monstrum, stay for the word nerding

I love this show overall, but I especially love the trippy, 1970s style intro - it’s so fun 🤩

About that Wilkins guy - the idea isn’t entirely without merit I think. It’s just much more easily done numerically than as a language. (As was proven ably by certain librarian named Dewy.)

The mention of idioms immediately reminded me of "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" and the recent internet discourse about Milkshake ducks and bean dads for shrimp toast crunch

"But what is a WORD?" Me: - screams in German Studies TA who tutored a bunch of first semesters - No but for real, I don't think we ever even defined WHAT a word is because my professor has a whole CLASS on that. Just on... word. I did however use the Rindfleischettikettierungsüberwachungsgesetz for de Sassure because it is 1)funny and 2)therefore a good way to talk about compound nouns and grammatical vs. lexicological :D I love this new series btw!!! All of you people make kickass, cool, stuff so much love to Dr. Erica, Dr. Z., Lindsay and Princess! (&everyone behind them)

As an English language student, I adore this show❤️

I love this channel and linguistics!

It's so fascinating how seemingly simple concepts like "word" and "language" that we use regular and expect to understand are actually very hard to define when you get down to it. I'd love a video on "What is a language?" I got into an argument about that on Reddit recently.

Not a really a word, but my favorite phrase that looks like a word is "djeet", which, in case you don't know, is New Jersey slang for "Did you eat?".

"what the word 'word' really means" One of those cunningly much-more-complex-than-it-sounds questions. I already LOVE this show, and I'm at 1:30. A great great addition to Storied.

Even Turks (I'm one) have a hard time understanding those insanely long words which nobody uses. But it works so technically "muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine" is a word but I need to read it part by part to process it.

4:15 i think that's actually a smart idea. Yes, a kid would just memorize the word as "zita," but they would also memorize many, many words similar to it the same way. After a while, it would become naturally easy to know the meaning of words you've never heard before. For example, if I said "prejump," even though it's not a word, it's easy to see it means 'before a jump."

"Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick" - Kevin.

Fun video! My parents had a big unabridged dictionary, and I still remember the longest word I could find was floccinaucinihilipilification, though it's possible this was only the case because it was at the top of the page, as it was the first or last word of the page.

and as a bonus I know the origin of the word podcast : D

6:06 ok that was a great twist, beautifully written script, given that writer a raise!

This is FASCINATING! I was waiting for a Finnish example of a super-long compound word, but Hungarian is pretty close :)

Love how you expect this episode to just have a bunch of straightforward answers, like a list of longest words. But then it introduces you to the philosophy of what even counts as a word in the first place. That's what word nerds like me are here for!

How sesquipedalian of you Also the word for when you feel left out because people keep using overly long words: sesquipedalienation

Until today, I thought antidisestablishmentarianism was constructed specifically to be a long word because it includes two negatives ('anti' and 'dis'). But knowing that it's being opposed to the removal of something, I can bring it back into my own personal use!

Longest word ever is when your mom starts yelling at you in Spanish and it sounds like one long pissed off word

Don't worry. Blackadder will be back before Prince George can say it.

in school i had the misfortune of having a teacher who thought my native language going strictly by the book and leaving out all the juicy information that could make the lesson interesting, language is much more flexible and colorful then what those old books provided thank you for this rubric and all the new information you provide us, and sorry for the grammer English isn't my first language

"If you accept that the definition of a word is some letters surrounded by a gap, then xnopyt, a-"

Putting spaces between word combinations (ice cream) is a very English custom, not common in Germanic languages in general. The custom has started to creep into Scandnavian languages, due to the domination of English popculture, but it can cause hilarious changes in meaning. Not to mention how annoying it is to have to figure out when to use a space for an English word.

Thinking of phrases as a word never came up before. This was an incredible video.

4:23 wohh, that's new to me!

I'm among those who do look into the origin of words. Joe Hansen recommended this show, BTW.

This specific channel is kind of like an optical illusion but about words. Like in an optical illusion you take things that you normally see and warp them to where it's mind-boggling. This channel has taken words and explain them in ways that I never thought about before which completely messes with my brain

This was much more succinct than my 300-level morphology course

This is what I was hoping for in college when I signed up for (what ended up being) my boring-ass linguistics class. I can't wait for more!

Planting those three long words to make your point is kinda slick.

As a linguistics major and technical writer, I have a massive and unfettered crush on Dr. Brozovsky.

I think that's super cool! I know that it's hard to define longest/biggest/heaviest anything in physics and nature, but it's cool to see that's true in linguistics too!

2 episodes in & I'm in love with this series

This was so cool. Thanks for adding this fun new program to Storied. It really got me back to the dissertation days studying Cognitive Linguistics.

I'm just gonna type some long words I use in this comment. Anachronistic, Disillusionment, Indiscrepancies, Postmodernism, Horticulturalists, Interdependent, Cataclysmically, Serendipitously, Intravenously, Parasocialism, Palatability, EFFERVESCENTLY. Okay, I'm done now. Thanks for the video! I wasn't expecting it to posit the ideas that it did, I thought it was just gonna be a trivia video.

I can’t believe I missed this when it came out! I’m so excited for more linguistic videos.

At 3:33, you talked about Bishop John Wilkins. The author/linguist Arika Okrent pointed out the strong similarities between Wilkins' word-lists and Roget's Thesaurus hundreds of years later.

Okay 6:16 legitimately blew my mind.

Came here via eon, another pbs channel. Like that there is now something to learn about words. I frankly learned most of my vocabulary growing up via books and reading (once I started no one could stop me and so before I was even in fifth grade I was reading college level books with decent comprehension, my parents gave up limiting my reading material and turned to just answering questions). I remember in middle school I was punished in detention to copy the dictionary. I then loved it so much I was then banned from this punishment during later detentions (mostly got these because my sister made us perpetually late to school so often no matter what I tried). I learned quite a bit about words then. Later in life I took up a huge interest in psychology, history, and in particular anthropology, which the last may have always been a thing considered I partially pushed myself to learn to read because I already had an obsession with ancient Egyptian culture and wanted access to the books on it. Anyway, this led to me further wants me to understand linguistics which has an origin as a field in anthropology or at least it partially does. I also remember debating in college with an English teacher over how English as a language gathered so many words it considers its own and my argument was more from its history of conquest and economics while hers...honestly I didn’t get it but it was definitely not based in this. So I don’t remember my point in this any more but hope you liked my comment

“What’s the longest word? Well, a more interesting question is, what counts as a word?” That was really fun! Keep this up and you’re going to give Monstrum competition as my favorite edutainment show on RU-vid (just don’t tell Dr. Z I said that).

I enjoyed 'uncharacteristically simplistic for a linguistics show' so much that I went back over it... all the while not realising how close I was to discovering the truth! Fantastic show. Love how philosophical it gets.

Really enjoyed this Erica. Thank you. Storied is a great channel and Otherwords is shaping up to be a great addition to it.

The idea of words being simply sounds with a shared collective knowledge and memory among speakers, and especially the idea of expanding words to include idioms, reminds me of that star trek species that communicated in allegory and story references. Kinda cool, i thunk.

There could even be an argument that a word like "internationalization" might be a phrase when first encountered, and then become a word after it is heard/spoken some number of times. Like, I don't think I had ever heard the word before, and I parsed it immediately. But, I parsed it as "international", and "ization", like a phrase. And I can literally feel in my head how that hits differently than a "WORD" that is truly its own thing. But as I get more used to it, the parts will congeal into a whole through repeated use. I actually think a conlang like Wilkish is really interesting, because it means that if you come into contact with a new word you've never seen, and there's no one to help you, you can try to figure out how to parse it. The same way that I can parse "internationalization", despite never having heard it.

“Back yard” is two words when it’s a noun and I will die on this hill

Such a great video. Can’t believe pbs is still teaching me at 30 years old. Kinda mind boggling to think that I owe them so much to my education and it’s why I will now start donating money because this is not only practical but necessary to have a well educated population. Thank you PBS!

Otherwords is turning me into such a big word nerd 🤩🤩 love this!!

As a word nerd, I heartily approve 😁 Can't wait for more videos, I'm excited for this series to develop!

I wish these shows had their own channels... But I get why it's done this way and this is really good sooooo subbed.

I adore your show! It's part of my morning breakfast routine. Not everyday, of course (I'd run out of videos to watch before long); after all, I watch anywhere from one to three videos back to back. And, it very much help how ADORABLE You are!

Also, the lenght of a word can be determined in various ways. - Number of letters - number of syllables - number of phonemes

I'm really enjoying these episodes!! Grazie!

Binging all these Otherwords episodes, love love loving it!!

I love the geekiness of this show. It's like a serious Seinfeld about topics that can only meaningful if you enjoy them. Thank you Otherwords-woman. Really, it's a compliment. Sorry if doesn't come as such. I truly enjoy the show.

Having not studied linguistics, I'm hoping you'll cover the Chomsky inherent brain structures for acquiring language thing and whether that's still strongly supported and what the theories are today (in your entertaining style that is). Loving the show so far (also mainly commenting for yt witchcraft).

My favorite long word is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which is the fear of long words.

What a video! So much plot twist and narrative realisation in just seven minutes.

Wasn't expecting that twist, yet my ESL-teacher brain really liked the tickle. Keep videos like these coming!

This channel is slowly becoming a mish-mash of things I love : monster, literature, language. What's next? Will you add cooking too and travel? I'm not complaining but I see potential of those to be added cause there are plenty of interesting food mention in stories and it would be nice to see the places where story's setting were based of.

@4:35 But I care! I care where the sounds came from! Every other day I find myself compulsively looking up the etymology of a word or phrase!!! My Brain cares

Wow I'm glad I discovered your show! I love finding something out that i wasn't even searching for

1:43 "aminagothstorjwannything?" That just cracks me up!

This puts learning new words in a new language into better perspective! Only ever speaking english never really consider why my brain knows these words

Wow, this had way more going on in it than I expected. This was awesome!

These are so great! Keep ‘em coming!

this was way more entertaining than I expected. Thanks 2 Cents for sending me this way!

This such a great show! Absolutely love it!

Good 👍, I do love this type of series.

Your episodes are entertaining and informative! I hope to see more soon :)

Love this show. Really entertaining, informative and well-produced (those animations!!).

Came from PBS Terra 🙃 Subbed, 👍 and 🔔 As someone who's been fascinated by Linguistics since I was really young I love this idea, finally a good channel to binge watch and learn in a fun way, thank you! 😊

There's one good thing and important use of pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis: brag to your frieds that you can say gibberish for two seconds straight without stopping and leave then super confused

Loved this video. Anymore, it's rare to learn something new on RU-vid.

God, the war flashbacks to linguistics class I got when they broke out that syntax tree are unreal

I got sent here by Sound Field, and will definitely watch more of these. I love learning about language. :D

And my day keeps getting better :)

Love this content, thanks!

You make so many incredible, informative, and engaging videos! Keep up the great work!

Ok, this is already super cool, but the amazing editing and into is some of the most delicious icing on top! And the fact it's PBS 😘👌 mmwah! Superb.

I like the lil flowers on your shirt. Great video!

These are great! More, please!!

"floccinaucinihilipilification" has always been my favorite long word.

Came here with a question. Came out with the same question plus an existential crisis, thank you, very cool

Love this series! 🔥 🔥 🔥

Another great insightful (in sight ful?) vid from Dr. Brozovsky!

This piece is excellent and well reasoned.