Learn the longest Hungarian word
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Michael: What's the longest Hungarian word? |
| Krisztina: And are there many such words in Hungarian? |
| Michael: At HungarianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Gabriel Garcia is always happy to learn something new about the Hungarian language. He asks Daniel Dudas, |
| "What's the longest word in Hungarian?" |
| Gabriel Garcia: Mi a leghosszabb szó a magyar nyelvben? |
| Dialogue |
| Gabriel Garcia: Mi a leghosszabb szó a magyar nyelvben? |
| Dudás Dániel: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Gabriel Garcia: Mi a leghosszabb szó a magyar nyelvben? |
| Michael: "What's the longest word in Hungarian?" |
| Dudás Dániel: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. |
| Michael: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért." |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Michael: In this lesson, we will be discussing the longest Hungarian word. You might be wondering what there is to discuss about a single word, but I assure you there is quite a lot of interesting information that can be gleaned from looking at this one word. For instance, one of the points that I would like to make before we look at the word in detail is that Hungarian is an agglutinative language. |
| The word "agglutinative" comes from "agglutinating," which means "cause to adhere" or "to fasten." It describes the action of sticking things together or, in a sense, "gluing" them together. In fact, if you listen carefully, you can even hear the word "glue" in the second syllable. Listen again: "agGLUtination." I'm sure you heard it this time. That should help you remember what it means if you ever need to use it or if you hear it again. In Hungarian, it sounds like this: |
| Krisztina: agglutináció. |
| Michael: But how does this relate to Hungarian and the longest Hungarian word? Well, you see, agglutinative languages are ones where complex words can be formed from stringing together other smaller elements of language. These smaller elements can be words or they can be suffixes, prefixes, or infixes. What's important is that, inside the complex word they form, these individual elements are still distinct and in their original form. They also each serve a specific grammatical function. This is why, when I tell you what the longest Hungarian word is, I will also be able to break it down into its constituent parts and show you how it is constructed. |
| You can also do this with some agglutinated English words, such as "manliness" for instance. In this word, you can clearly distinguish the smaller language elements and their grammatical functions. "Man" is the basic noun, "-li" forms adjectives, and "-ness" forms abstract nouns. Don't go thinking that English is also an agglutinative language now! English may have agglutinative constructions, but, technically, it is not an agglutinative language. It is what is called a "fusional" language. In Hungarian, the word "fusional" is: |
| Krisztina: fuzionális. |
| Michael: The basic difference between agglutinative and fusional languages is that agglutinative languages create inflection through the use of suffixes, prefixes, infixes, and the like, but fusional languages will squeeze or "fuse" two or more inflections into a single element. |
| It's easy to understand if I give you examples of agglutination and fusion in English. If, for instance, we take the root word "jump" and add to it the suffix "-ed," we can create the past tense of "jump," which is "jumped." The suffix "-ed" clearly tells us that the verb is now in the past tense. These two morphemes or language elements have been "glued" together and each has a specific grammatical function and only that function. This is a form of agglutination. |
| On the other hand, if we take a word like "be" in English, we can change it into several different forms and each time it has a different grammatical function. Use it in a sentence with "I" and it becomes "am;" use it in a sentence with "you" and it becomes "are." In these examples, it signifies both the verb "to be" and the first or third person. One morpheme or language element can be a fusion of different grammatical properties. This is, in a very simplistic way, what is meant by a "fusional" language. |
| As you can see, I was not lying when I said that, although we are only talking about a single word in this lesson, there is a lot of information that can be gleaned from it! I've talked for a while already and you still haven't even heard the word so let's get down to it! While you are listening, I'm quickly going to make myself a cup of coffee. Here it is: the longest word in Hungarian: |
| Krisztina: megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért |
| Michael: Right, I'm back, with my coffee. Believe it or not, that word is forty-four letters long. I'm sure you recognized it from this lesson's dialogue. It's the longest official word in Hungarian. That said, I must point out that although it is officially a word, not many native Hungarians will use it. For one thing, its meaning is rather unusual. It means: "for your continued behavior as if you could not be desecrated." This is obscure, at best, and reflects the reason why there are not more of these kinds of words: the longer the word becomes the more difficult it is to understand. |
| Because Hungarian is an agglutinative language, one could, theoretically, form words that go on and on. But, as we have seen, there would be no point in that. Also, because of the possibility of endless agglutination, there are those who say that really, there is no longest word in Hungarian. One could, with a bit of imagination and creativity, come up with longer and longer words. One such word that was invented is the ironic: |
| Krisztina: legösszetettebbszóhosszúságvilágrekorddöntéskényszerneurózistünetegyüttesmegnyilvánulásfejleszthetőségvizsgálataitokként |
| Michael: That word is 120 letters long! I said it was ironic because it means "about your investigations of the upgradeability of the manifestation of the syndrome of the neurosis about the need to decide which is the world record of the most complex longest word." In other words, it's a word that was coined in order to talk about the need to decide what the longest word is. Even trying to explain the meaning of that word is almost impossible, unless you have a lot of time on your hands. And so, as you can see, it's not very practical to create really long words. Forty-four letters is probably around the limit for a long word if you want it to have any practical use at all. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Michael: Let's take a closer look at the dialogue. Do you remember how Gabriel Garcia says "What's the longest word in Hungarian?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Krisztina as Gabriel Garcia: Mi a leghosszabb szó a magyar nyelvben? |
| [Recall 2] |
| Michael: Now, let's take a look at our second sentence. Do you remember how Daniel Dudas says "Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Krisztina as Dudás Dániel: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. |
| Let's now have a look at the separate parts of this very long Hungarian word. This will help you to see just how agglutination works. Listen to it one more time: |
| Krisztina: megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért |
| Michael: The first morpheme we hear in this word is the verb prefix: |
| Krisztina: meg |
| Michael: which means "completed." This joins to the word root |
| Krisztina: szent |
| Michael: which means "holy." Added to that is a suffix similar in function to the English "-ness," conveying the meaning of "holiness:" |
| Krisztina: -ség |
| Michael: So now we have a construction that means something like "completed holiness." Next in line is one of two variants of |
| Krisztina: -tlen |
| Michael: which in this case is |
| Krisztina: -telen. |
| Michael: This is a noun suffix similar in meaning to the English suffix "-less," which is how the transitive verb is formed out of an adjective. So now we have "completed holinessless." Following that is |
| Krisztina: -het |
| Michael: which is similar in meaning to the English "may" or "can," and implies possibility. This means we have now constructed something that translates more or less directly to "completed holinessless may." There's not going to be much point in me continuing with the direct translation from this point on, because it is just going to start sounding like nonsense. Still, it was fun to try to make sense for a while. The next two morphemes are ones we've already mentioned previously. The first one is |
| Krisztina: -etlen |
| Michael: another variant of |
| Krisztina: -tlen |
| Michael: which expresses a lack of something, and the second morpheme is |
| Krisztina: -ség |
| Michael: which means something like the English suffix "-less." The next element in the word forms an adjective from a noun in much the same way as the English "-y" does in a word like "witty." It is |
| Krisztina: -es. |
| Michael: This morpheme is interesting because it imparts to an adjective the meaning of "to pretend to be." I don't think we have anything like that in English. It sounds like this: |
| Krisztina: -ked. |
| Michael: In English, we can add "-A-N-C-E" to the end of a verb like "accept" in order to form a noun, like "acceptance." This next Hungarian morpheme acts on verbs in the same way. It is: |
| Krisztina: -és. |
| Michael: That just leaves two more elements to discuss. The first is |
| Krisztina: -eitek |
| Michael: which is a plural possessive suffix. Let me explain. In English, it would be similar if we talked about "your dogs" and the "your" refers to more than one person. And that brings us to the very last element in the word, which is |
| Krisztina: -ért |
| Michael: and it translates to "for" or "because of." As I've mentioned before, the result of gluing together all these morphemes is a word that means "for your continued behaviour as if you could not be desecrated." Did you notice that there was only one root word in our analysis of the constituents of this word? Yep, the only root word was |
| Krisztina: szent |
| Michael: which means "holy" or "saint." All the other morphemes were affixes. As I pointed out previously, these affixes all have a fixed grammatical function that does not change, and this is why it is possible to construct such a long word with them. Perhaps, if you learn Hungarian well enough, you can try your hand at inventing your own long words! |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: In this lesson, you learned about the longest word in Hungarian. You learned that Hungarian is an agglutinative language, which means that each of the parts of this very long word have a very specific grammatical function, and that they only have that function. This is why, in Hungarian, one could actually create new words at any time if they wanted to. Be careful not to make them too long, though! They start to sound more like nonsense the longer they get. |
| Expansion/Contrast |
| Michael: Not only does Hungarian have a very long longest word, but you can also create really long sentences with only one vowel: the |
| Krisztina: e. |
| Michael: The following sentence means "An excellent system that can help you find people and lots of other things." It is referring to the internet. This is the sentence: |
| Krisztina: Egy remek rendszer, mellyel embereket, meg rengeteg elemet megkereshetsz. |
| Michael: There's even a game in Hungarian where the participants must make sentences using only this vowel. The game name, appropriately, contains only this vowel as well: |
| Krisztina: Eszperente. |
| Michael: You might want to wait until you are quite fluent in Hungarian before attempting a game of this sort! |
| Practice Section |
| Michael: Let's review. Respond to the prompts by speaking aloud. Then, repeat after the native speaker focusing on pronunciation. Do you remember how Gabriel Garcia says "What's the longest word in Hungarian?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Gabriel Garcia: Mi a leghosszabb szó a magyar nyelvben? |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Krisztina as Gabriel Garcia: Mi a leghosszabb szó a magyar nyelvben? |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Gabriel Garcia: Mi a leghosszabb szó a magyar nyelvben? |
| Michael: And do you remember how Daniel Dudas says "Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Dudás Dániel: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Krisztina as Dudás Dániel: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Dudás Dániel: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion |
| Michael: English also has a very long longest word, but I feel almost like it's cheating because it was created specifically to be the longest word. It is a technical term that refers to a lung disease that is caused by breathing in silica particles that have originated in a volcano. It sounds like this: "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis." Good luck trying to tell your family and friends what you have if you ever get THAT disease. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Krisztina: Viszontlátásra! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
Comments
Hide