On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 21:54:14 -0400, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

> Nicholas Bodley scripsit:
>
>> Reminds me of Mtskheta, a city (or small geographical region in Georgia
>> (Gruzia).
>> I suspect that that could be CCCCV[CV], but I'm a dilettante...
>
> In Georgian the maximal onset is 8 C's, as in the two-syllable surname
> Mgrvgrvladje.

Utterly delightful. My jaw dropped, and I gasped gently; no kidding. Much
appreciated.

Where is the syllable split? Mgrv grvladje {practicing sotto voce}? It
seems that all letters are voiced, too. (Btw, is "Dvořák" one syllable?)

This reminds me of a gentle joke told by Garrison Keillor (Prairie Home
Companion, iirc distributed by Public Radio International), roughly a
decade ago, about aid to the former Yugoslavia: Along with food and
medicine, we were going to include a generous supply of vowels. It was
meant all in fun, not as a put-down, by any means.

Without committing too much more sin, I'd love to know of words with long
strings of vowels; Dutch "parrot eggs" is a decent candidate.

I have been suppressing questions and comments to Qalam that are primarily
or completely about linguistics, and don't want to add energy to further
dilution. Nevertheless, this is such a[n] hospitable place that I'm sorely
tempted, at times.

There's a company private mailing list I know very well that spawned
another list to keep the original on-topic, and the process eventually
repeated, yet again! The least-constrained of the three is "fair game" for
almost anything except politics; such messages are simply ignored.

Have fun,

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
Opera 7.5 (Build 3778), using M2