Monday, March 18, 2013

Longest word in the world (in any language)

Why not start your Monday by reading the world's longest word?

The other day we were at one of KPJ's hospital by chance and I chanced upon a pamphlet showing a long word - Oesophagogastroduodenoscopy. The A to Z alphabet has 26 letters in total.

27 letters in a word, long enough for you?


Oesophagogastroduodenoscopy or simply pronounced OGD is a clinical procedure to look into the esophagus, stomach and duodenum to find the cause of:

  • Upper abdominal pain
  • Indigestion and heartburn
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Swallowing problem
  • Bleeding from the upper gastrointestinal tract
  • Inflammation, ulcers and tumors of the esophagus,

among others. I learnt something there.


27 is long but what about the longest one?

Google around further and you will find that the longest word in the English language is a 189,819-letter, chemical name of a protein known as titin.

Here is a video grab of a man trying to pronounce it loudly and according to the video clip, it took him more than 3 hours to complete the task.

Video source


The word is “Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl …. isoleucine”, but seriously, don't waste your time reading (or pronouncing) it. We are not even sure if it is a word.

You might also be interested in what are the other long words at wikipedia.

Cheers!

3 comments:

Adam said...

people love making fake words

tehr said...

memang boleh terbelit lidah nak baca perkataan tu
haha

de engineur said...

i have trouble pronouncing it, and i dont want to.

maybe, just for fun