The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

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Nortaneous
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by Nortaneous »

Amqoli:
/tʃihaʃtibʒ/ "cloudy"
/a/ "take, have"

Hlu:
/ʄaŋniɬ/ "north", /tʰɤpjɯs/ "kind of tea", /kʰɯjwet/ "otherwise"
no V words but plenty of CV words

Kannow:
/kʷipikʷtsʷʼəːw/ "ink"
/waw/ "water" (shortest noun; verbs can never appear unaffixed; shortest possible verbal formation is /eːg/ "you were")
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lsd
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by lsd »

in a priori 3S language (1 sign=1 sound = 1 sense), primes are often of one sign/sound/sense, so I have a hundred words of one sign (...)...
in this type of language a whole text can be considered as a single word, but I usually write on ostraca or marginalia that I do not keep...
also the longest word that I keep is 289 signs, it is one of the names of this language...
Last edited by lsd on 24 May 2021 08:55, edited 1 time in total.
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kiwikami
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by kiwikami »

In Alál, the shortest words are a handful of prepositions:

u /ɔ/ 'after and because of'
ù /vo/ 'identity copula'
á /a/ 'set-membership copula'

The longest would likely be a verb, but I haven't put together a verbal lexicon yet and the instructions say not to coin a new lexical entry, so just going off of the nominal lexicon:

hâsutıtahàḳmaakaraama /ça'sodɪdəˌçɑŋməgəɾəm/ 'rope connecting a spare air tank hanging below a dive boat.OBL'
hâsutıtahàḳmaakaraaım /ça'sodɪdəˌçɑŋməgəɾəhɪm/ 'rope connecting a spare air tank hanging below a dive boat.AGT'
hâsutıtahàḳmaakaraaúm /ça'sodɪdəˌçɑŋməgəɾəˌhum/ 'rope connecting a spare air tank hanging below a dive boat.PAT'

From hâsutıtah 'spare air tank' and ḳmaakaraama 'tether holding something hanging below'. The only reason this word exists is because I was coming up with various diving-related terms a few months ago and realized I didn't know if there was a technical English term for "that whole setup with the extra tank hanging 15 feet down for decompression and emergency purposes".
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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notahippo
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by notahippo »

Proto-Zaebfa:

Longest: kiŋŋajku - sagebrush leaves
Shortest: Ki, ej, ir, ʃa, vɞ, te, and ja.
I, the, go to, or, bright, is, and yes.

*Note: The lexicon of Proto-Zaebfa is around 160 words
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VaptuantaDoi
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

The longest words in Decééyinéeqi that I’ve translated in actual texts so far are two verbs; ríhiheyéekíikiníidiqíi, meaning “I will quickly scatter them”, and iñeéqídíkííqéeqíníiqíi “long ago they didn’t build it any more”. Both are 21 letters long.

However, I think the longest possible verb using the roots I have would be gíídíííikiheyéedéékíícétíqíqíqíyééqíítéé; “I assume that y’all weren’t holding onto each other at that moment” (40 letters), which for a sentence that artifical is amazingly coherent.

As for nouns, they can theoretically get hella long; tiqíigiéqítéékiténicíídíiníítééqíígéékéénídíí “or alternatively: all around; from above and below; from the east, south, west and from the north of the hot, hollow oven” (45 letters). This is cause there's a number of cliticising single-syllable adjectives which can stack as much as you like pretty much; otherwise nouns aren't that exciting.

The longest pronouns are néeciñiníkéé “our (incl.)” and yégííheníkéé “their (anim.)”, both 12 letters long.

The shortest words is ó, the root for “shout”, which would also be the intransitive case form of the noun "shout". I think you can work out how many letters long that is.

These are also great demonstrations of one of the most noticeable quirks of Decééyinéeqi: the longer words are, the more likely it is for the only vowels to be e and i, while shorter words are more likely to have e and o.
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by Larryrl »

The longest word in Shu is OBŬMORTIUNBAKAWO which means hitman.
Bu mac zoom pana shem.
Me too sexy for shirt.
Bu mac zoom pana shem.
Me too sexy for shirt.
Kle mac bu run
So sexyI hurt


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wos pis ho tu
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Flavia
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by Flavia »

hagzahlemnagn uz [ˈhâʒaˌjə̌n̼áɲʊs] (morphologically two words, but phonetically one) - carrying - this is an inflected form, the longest lexeme is:
cegnevzoretmnon [ˈkɛ̂ɲəˌð̼ɔ́rətʃn̼ɔ̌ɲ] - a knight that fights with anybody that he sees - from cegnevzoret (duel) + mnon (an affix for liking something)
û, u [u ʊ] - am, is - these are clitics, the shortest non-clitic words are CVC and there is plenty of them.
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by imcute »

toki lili(the language i created today before noon)
shortest:
a(toki pona:a)
(there is also i and u)
longest:
there are 8 of them which are equally long and 2 letters long
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Imralu
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by Imralu »

The longest word in my Balog dictionary is wihiyuwiqiyuh [ˈwɪɦɪjʊˌwɪʔɪjʊʍ] meaning "(to be a) screaming piha", Lipaugus vociferans. It comes from the onomatopoeic root wiyuwiqiyuh "to call (of/like a screaming piha)" plus the infix -ih- indicating custom or habit. I know I've written longer words at times. For example, if we ignore the fact that they're birds, we could have buweŋekanenuwwihiyuwiqiyuhonivvalusoniiž "my friend's screaming piha's dentist. That can, however, also be written as multiple words as buweŋ e kaned o nuwwihiyuwiqiyuh o nivvalus o niiž

Very short words are a lot more noticeable. The compound linking interfixes -e- and -o- can be separate words as e or o. For the former, ai is more common as a separate word. Au is possible for o, but not dominant.

Then there are a lot of contentives that consist of a single consonant:

b "use one's hand"
d "use the sole of one's foot"
g "cause"
m "peceive"
s "be the location of an event-state"
š "be what/who, I wonder"
t "be the time of an event-state"

Quite a few of the pro-forms are only a single consonant as well, but they tend to take a plural or singular suffix when they would otherwise stand alone as a predicate, so they are almost never individual words in their own right.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific, AG = agent, E = entity (person, animal, thing)
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Arayaz
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Re: The longest and the shortest word in your conlang

Post by Arayaz »

Without inflections, my longest word in :con: Yolo is a tie between pokopóto, a verb meaning "to groom oneself," and potopóko, a transitive verb meaning "to whittle (sth)." But with inflections, the longest word is olantsshántashpopotopóko, meaning "Will (one) really be whittling (sth)?"

The shortest word is a tie between we "hare," lo "to do so," and sa, an archaic word meaning "hill."
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