Re: Long consonant strings (Was: Re: Unicode Tibetan)

Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>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?)
>
>

I'd assume it's Mgrvgrvlad je, otherwise he wouldn't have been speaking
of CCCCCCCCV. Don't ask me to pronounce it so, though.

>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.
>
>

I remember that... Then there were jokes about Wales and Hawaii going
into trades, one with an excess of consonants and the other with too
many vowels...

>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.
>
>

The two classic examples I've heard in English involve finding a word
with five consecutive consonant letters, and one with five consecutive
vowel letters. (witchcraft and queueing, respectively. "Strengths" is
another favorite.)

~mark