Jump to content

Talk:Longest word in French

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Issues

[edit]

This article has multiple issues, for instance:

  1. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobie is a misspelling and the correct spelling is hippopotomonstrosesquidaliophobie. The acute accent is absolutly necessary for this word to be pronounced with /-pe-/ instead of */-pə-/. — This, as well as most (!) other items on the list, is sourced to Case (2014), which is self-published work that doesn't seem to be a reliable source for the highly standardized French language.
  2. Of course all French nouns in -phobie have corresponding adjectives that are longer and end in -phobique, plural -phobiques. An expert in French morphology and/​or comparative word length would have noticed that. Both fr.wp and fr.wikt have the adjective.
  3. fr:Liste des mots les plus longs en français lists words that are much longer than hippopotomonstrosesquipédaliophobique(s): aminométhylpyrimidinylhydroxyéthylméthythiazolium (49 letters) and anémélectroreculpédalicoupeventombrosoparacloucycle (51 letters). And many others that are much longer than the 18-letter word interdépartemental on the current list. — See also the French Wiktionary list.

I am sorry to say that this article looks like amateurish original research — in its current unencyclopedic state, a candidate for deletion. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 07:41, 22 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@LiliCharlie: The only reference for several of these words is a single self-published (on Lulu.com) book that purports to list a bunch of phobias - it has no reference for any of them. Those (including the hippo- pseudoword) should be removed, I think - I don't speak French or I would do it myself. Note: There are editors who keep trying to insert the English version of that "hippo-" word into long English-language lists, even though there's no evidence that it has ever been used as an actual word. If nothing else, it misuses the "hippo" prefix, which means "horse", not "really big!" - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:11, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]