Some languages have freakishly long words. Hawaiian drivers licenses have literally chopped
off people's... names. One ancient comedian spelled out this mystery
meat dish. And German words can get so hefty that even
when they lost their longest one in 2013 it hardly left a dent. So what's going on in these words, and just
how long can a word get? A couple years ago, I was living the life. Chained to a desk ten hours a day, working
weekends, taking lunch breaks to go snorkel with turtles in the reef! Oh, did I not mention I was chained to a desk
in Hawaii? So I had a good swim and I'm walking back. I must have zoned out on the scenery, singing
with the birds or something because somewhere I took a wrong turn. And now I am face to face with the street
sign that never quits. Seriously, those letters went on forever! If you're a normal human in this situation,
you know you're lost, you turn around and you walk the other way. But language nerds? We drop our ice cream and sit there mesmerized
by phonemes. Auwe, you think a lone male goes wandering
the streets licking an ice-cream cone? That is creepy. Nah, we eat shave ice. The kicker though is if you pop open a Hawaiian
dictionary you won't find these forever words. In fact, most terms will look downright short. So where are the extra letters coming from? Hang out with me long enough and you'll hear
about Pacific Island taboos. In Hawaii, the word is "kapu". Oh, and there are some intriguing kapu stories,
but that's for later. So keep "kapu" but now go and grab the sounds
"ho'o", which my grammar book calls a causative. Smash that onto "kapu" and you'll get "ho'okapu",
maybe make something holy or cause to be taboo. But these affixes only buy us a few characters
and they give me grammatical headaches, so no big wins here. Besides, most Hawaiian grammar is done with
separate little words called particles. And if you thought dissecting word-beasts
was a pain, here's your chance to tame a bunch of little scurrying word insects! So beautiful though. What's better than taking your base word and
growing it by sticking on some appendages? Adding another base word! This is called compounding, and it'll earn
you some serious extra letters. Watcha got? Got a brain? How about a lightning brain! Dung? Here's some Pele dung! Triggerfish? Why not a blunt-pig-snout-triggerfish! Humuhumunukunukuāpua'a. Impressive word-building, Hawai'i. So then, is Hawaii home to the longest word
ever? It is not. What about German or Greek from earlier? Same strategy: compound, compound, compound... No record-breakers there either, unfortunately. The award goes to... drummrrrolllll.... A master-compounder-extraordinaire, a 16th-century
writer, Tirumalāmbā. She used compounding in her Sanskrit masterwork
in which there is an entire chapter devoted to basically just saying, "So this guy passed
through a part of Tamil Nadu." But she gushed over that region, I mean she
really laid it on thick. One (just one!) of the litany of flowery Sanskrit
words she used to describe the place contains dozens and dozens of compounds. And that is how a Sanskrit compound made the
Guiness World Records for longest word. Are we having a moment here? Is that thought crossing your mind too, like,
theoretically couldn't we just keep adding and adding hyphenated compounds infinitely? Welp, you're right! Kind of unfair then, huh? If that's how we're playing this, fine. It's a hyphenated verbal arms race. The thing about words like these is they don't really get used. Truth is, even with compounding, Hawaiian
and German and even Sanskrit aren't winning any average word length awards. Around the world, languages where people actually
use long words in nearly every single sentence? Oh, they build words very differently. I should come back to that sometime. Stick around and subscribe for language!
