Talk:List of the longest English words with one syllable

message: I have no idea what this is good for when English are actually two different languages - spoken form has quite little what to do with written one. One can write that word also "sqwirld", it is just "another written English". (But, do you know, that quite long words without vowels exist in some languages? Even in the languages with practically phonetic transcription.) [68.94.242.235 20:10, 23 Sep 2004]
:This page is worthy of an encyclopedia article, even if it is a little on the trivial side. It's interesting information, even if it is comparing apples and oranges to some degree. I've tried to explain the various caveats in the article, though you've pointed out several more, which I appreciate.
:You're quite right: spoken and written English are quite different these days. A large part of this is due to the Great Vowel Shift and especially the prescriptivism of the early Modern English era. During this time, spelling gradually became less and less phonetic. I'll see what I can do about integrating these caveats into the article, though you are more than welcome to contribute to article yourself.
:Fascinating point about long words without vowels. If you know any specific examples, please let me know either here on the talk page or on the article itself. Thanks, • Benc • 20:43, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Czech word čtvrthrst :-). Literal meaning is quarter of handful. One can create even quite long sentences without vowels. Very well known is a jawcracker strč prst skrz krk - stick a finger throught a neck. It is possible to create even longer senetnces, Czech language has quite many vowelless words. I can create now for example: Vlk z Vrt, vstrč prst skrz čtvrthrst v smrk. - Wolf from Vrty, stick a finger throught a quarter of handful into a spruce. It sounds a bit artificially but it is a legal Czech sentence :-). BTW, Czech language has also quite many words with one sylable (English too but English has a very simple structure :-)). One can create stories using only one-syllable words. Because Czech is a Slavic language, it is really difficult (but I am not sure whether Englishman can appreciate it). I can show you examples but I would probably break some copyright. Miraceti 06:17, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow! That's quite a word! So, how many syllables would čtvrthrst be? My hunch would be 3 - something like čət - vrə - thrəst (he says, cunningly avoiding interpretting the actual consonant sounds)... - IMSoP 19:03, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, there are only two syllables: čtvrt-hrst. A consonant R (and also L) can be used as a vowel in Czech language. Pronounciation is really difficult (be glad, there is no Ř consonant as it is in my name:-)). Č is like "ch" in English word "chair", R is really rolling off (almost like Finnish R), remaining letters are hopefully clear. Miraceti 18:57, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Written vs. spoken language 

message: Unsurprisingly, each long word contains multiple digraphs and trigraphs. That is, multiple letters are used as part of a single grapheme (e.g., spr).
This is incorrect, at least from any definition of "grapheme", "digraph", or "trigraph" that I've encountered. 
A grapheme (as defined by David Crystal's Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, and as used by general convention, I believe) is the "minimal contrastive unit in a writing system." So, a letter (e.g. "A", "p", etc.) is a grapheme, but multiple letters together (as in the given example of "spr") are still multiple graphemes
Also, for more than one grapheme/letter to be a digraph or trigraph, they have to represent a single sound. So, ll in "squirrelled" and ch in "scraunched" (among others) are digraphs, but there are no trigraphs in either one. There is no sequence of three letters/graphemes in either word which makes a single sound. EDIT: In my dialect at least; maybe I'm missing something that would be different in other dialects.
   
--JoshRaspberry 04:02, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops! You're absolutely right. (And I have Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, so I really should've known better.) I've fixed the sentence in question. Most of these words still contain digraphs, though. But scr certainly isn't a trigraph; it's three distinct graphemes. Thanks for pointing that out. • Benc • 04:38, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem. :) But there's still the problem of using "grapheme" to mean a multi-letter combination. I can't think of a conventional use of the term "grapheme" with which this would fit. A digraph is a digraph because it consists of two graphemes. Additionally, the example of qu as a digraph isn't correct, as the two letters represents the two sounds /k/+/w/. Unless we want to argue that English has in its phonemic inventory the single sound /kw/. What do you think of my edit? --JoshRaspberry 06:32, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good. :-) • Benc • 06:40, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graphemes 

message: askoxford.com suprisingly makes no mention of squirrelled when they answer the question on their site.  
:It's also interesting to note that aside from sites that mirror content from wikipedia, a quick google search doesn't mention squirrelled as a single syllable english word, although there are sites that mention that it is sometimes pronounced as one by Canadian speakers.
:I think the article should mention that squirrelled a contested single syllable word and stick to promoting the words that are commonly accepted as single syllable words. Suppafly 22:19, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  More arguments against squirrelled 

message: What are the arguments against broughammed?  The article just says it's "questionable on other grounds".  Could we get some specifics? Factitious 01:51, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
:The fact that it's a completely silly word? A more sensible answer is that most dictionaries that list brougham do so only as a noun, not a verb (e.g. the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the three Dictionary.com found), so broughammed is not a word according to these dictionaries. - IMSoP 13:53, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The latest edit showing that broughammed is equal to broomed is totally offbase. Not to mention that broughammed is definitely not a word recognized by any major dictionary. Suppafly 14:53, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi!  I added that edit because I didn't actually understand how it was pronounced, until I found that brougham (a type of car) was pronounced 'broom' on a website, then extrapolated.  How the hell *is* 'broughammed' supposedly easily pronounced in any dialect with one syllable, anyway?  To me it still looks like "broggemed". Sadly I don't have the URL where I found that, but http://www.mail-archive.com/ql-users@quanta.org.uk/msg03454.html agrees with that pronunciation anyway. --Stevage 22:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  The broom pronounciation might be right, I've never heard it like that, but the pronunciation guides on a few sites indicate that is acceptible.  Honestly though 'broughammed' is not a word and isn't present in any legitimate dictionary that I've found.  I'd be all for someone removing it until it can be verified  as being a real word. Not mention that neither 'broughammed' or 'brougham' are used in common speech. Suppafly 05:25, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broughammed 

message: I have to question this one. Quarreled is pronounced Kwo-rəlled. That's definitely 2 syllables. I tried it in American and I just managed to get rid of the 2nd syllable by dropping the r as well. Can somone outside the UK tell me that they pronounce it as one syllable? Big Moira 00:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quarreled 

message: As an individual taught strict American Midwestern enunciation in the mid 1950s I can vouch that -ed was often taught to be pronounced as a separate syllable within my family. The obvious caveat being that -ed words, as spoken rather than as taught, may have been very clipped and precise but not pronounced as an extra syllable. But the teaching was unambiguous. I now have a seven year old and I had been teaching him to pronounce -ed as a separate syllable, passing on my own understanding of the proper enunciation of words. Having read the entries on syllables I've since stopped and am trying to undo that cultural heritage. HeitzsoHeitzso 21:28, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronouncing -ed as a separate syllable 

message: The issue with this page derives from the idea that a grapheme (essentially a letter,) represents a phoneme (sound.) While this is true in basic terms, e.g. /k/ is represented by <k> (for the purpose of this discussion, we will presume that /k/ is one sound when in reality it can be realised as a number of different sounds, or allophones,) the relationship between grapheme and phoneme is not so simple and therefore claiming a word is longer than another based of the number of graphemes it has becomes somewhat trivial. We must remember that English is written in the Roman alphabet which was created to write Latin, which has a different phoneme inventory, a different set of rules for morphophemic structure, and in fact is not directly related to English. Further to this, when the Roman alphabet was adopted (before the great vowel change,) English itself had a very different phoneme inventory, and the standardisation of the spelling system leaves us with a representation of how the English language used to sound. Many words should now be read as one word, rather than as a sum of their parts. E.g. <Knights> is pronounced (British RP)  and not  (which would the pronounciation on the assumption that <k> = /k/, <n> = /n/, etc.,) which proves the difficulty in describing word length.
:I'm not sure what you mean by "issue".  I think it's clear that "longest" in the page title is in terms of  the number of letters, rather than the number of graphemes, number of phonemes, length of time to utter, or anything else.  The page is a harmless discussion of a piece of trivia, with no reference to serious phonology or historical linguistics. I don't believe it contains any phrases which might suggest otherwise.  jnestorius(talk) 19:06, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  On the English [[Orthography]] 

message: So it looks to me like the references here are just attesting to the fact that the listing is a word, not to it being the longest word.  It seems to me that this 'list of longest one syllable words' therefore constitutes original research.  I would even argue that it is inherently original research unless someone can produce a notable third party source where such a list is published.  Any comments? Locke9k (talk) 19:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The references for broughammed, scraunched, and schnappsed explicitly mention being the longest. The list does not claim to be definitive. jnestorius(talk) 12:30, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The expression (and ban on) original research are widely misused and nearly universally misunderstood, but the objections to this list — and certainly some of the words on it — in fact, all but schmaltzed and strengthed — are well taken. — Robert Greer (talk) 19:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Research? 

message: According to this article, schtroumpfed is a French word. The fact that it was used once by one English writer doesn't make it an English word. Or am I missing something? DoctorKubla (talk) 19:10, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No, schtroumpfed is not a French word, assuming the verb schtroumpfer is a regular -er verb (although it has the 13-letter monosyllabic third-person plural present tense form schtroumpfent). The article's lede contains the caveat "Some candidates are questionable on grounds of spelling, pronunciation, or status as obsolete, dialect, proper noun, or nonce word", to which list I have added loanword. The presence of a word in the table should not be taken to mean that most people or most Wikipedians think that the word is valid; rather, that some people might argue the word is valid. Feel free to discount (mentally) any or all those words you don't approve of. As the Oxford English Dictionary states, "the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference."  jnestorius(talk) 08:53, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''schtroumpfed'' 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on List of the longest English words with one syllable. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080220074821/http://www.bartleby.com/61/ to http://www.bartleby.com/61/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:19, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on List of the longest English words with one syllable. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081011142108/http://www.suholidays.org.uk/sites/scoughall.htm to http://www.suholidays.org.uk/sites/scoughall.htm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071031222718/http://www.doyouschweppes.com/ to http://www.doyouschweppes.com/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:21, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I did some research and it looks like, despite it looking like it should be four or so syllables, halfpennyworth is one syllable, at least in British English. Collins Dictionary and Merriam-Webster are among my sources for this. Kelvinnkat (talk) 03:06, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither source says it's only one, and the shorter reading still only looks like two. StAnselm (talk) 04:46, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Halfpennyworth