WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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This is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

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The longest place name in the UK

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And it took me two weeks to learn that

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And that's what word nerds do; we learn long words

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because it's interesting,

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we learn that okay, the longest word, technically, in the English language is about 100,000 characters long.

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But it's the name of a compound, so it doesn't really count

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We learn that the longest word in any major dictionary is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

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But that doesn't really count because it's technical

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So then, we learn that the longest non-technical word in any major dictionary

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is floccinaucinihilipilification.

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But that doesn't really count because it was coined

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because it was intended to be a long word

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it means "being meaningless",

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which is kind of ironic.

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Deliberately

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So, then we learn that the longest non-technical non-coined word in the English language is

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antidisestablishmentarianism.

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But that doesn't really come up in everyday speech

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Language doesn't generally support,

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at least, the English language doesn't generally support,

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long words.

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Because they're inconvenient,

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because they're unwieldy,

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because they slow everyone down.

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We shortened "internet" to "net", for crying out loud,

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because three syllables was too much.

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This isn't a real place name

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this isn't what anyone calls this place

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it was a publicity stunt from Victorian times

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Even years later, here I am

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reciting that name to you

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because it's now a tourist destination.

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Long words are there because they're interesting,

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not because anyone actually uses them in speech.

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Longest word I use: internationalisation,

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which is a term in technology.

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That is an unhelpful 20 characters long

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and that's long enough that it gets abbreviated to i18n

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when it gets written down.

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Not really impressive,

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not difficult to say, not something you need to memorise.

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But that's how language works

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If it's inconvenient, we shorten it

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This could never have arisen by anything

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other than a publicity stunt.

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Something you might not have known.

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