Skip to content

Longest lettergroup?

Featured Replies

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Can anyone suggest what might the longest lettergroups — sequences of connected letters -- in Arabic? I'm looking for test cases and to determine maximum context length for some OpenType lookups.

If anyone has similar information for Persian and Urdu, what would also be appreciated.

فسنستفتيكموها
or just
فسنستفتيكمو
if you want right-joining connections too, أوفليستأمنوننكموهالهن should be the longest word.

  • Author

The kind folk on the Persian Computing mailing list came up with some great examples in use in a variety of languages:

Arabic:
ليستخلفنهم ‎(Perhaps the longest such sequence in the Koran. From 24:55.)
الفلسطينيين (The Palestinians)
القسطنطينية (Constantinople)

Persian (Farsi):
منمشتعلعشقعلیمچهکنم (a famous conjoined version of the phrase من مشتعل عشق علیم چه کنم which nastaliq calligraphers write in this way to display their virtuosity)
مستضعفینی
فیلیپینیها (Filipinos)

Urdu:
اسپیسیفیکیشنز (specifications)
کمپیٹیبیلیٹی (compatibility)

Uighur:
بىسىمئىشلىتىشىدە
يىغىننىڭيېپىلىش

Azeri:
آلتمیشینجیسی (sixtieth)

Smiles is the longest word in English. Right?!
So, the longest word in Arabic should be Zamilay = Female Companion?!
زمیلــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــه
More:
فاسقیناکموه
انلزمکموها
Just copy and paste them in the search box and see
their translations + transliterations at Tanzil.info
with Flowers

Azeri/Ottoman with one more syllable آلتمیشینجیسینی / آلتمیشینجیسیكی altmışıncısını (his/her/its sixtieth - definite accusative).

In case you need a Latin equvalent, here's the longest Turkish phrase ever attested:

Avrupalılaştırılmıyanlardanmısınız? "Are you one of those people who oppose the adoption of European manners?"

Create an account or sign in to comment

Important Information

We are placing functional cookies on your device to help make this website better.

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.