this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
977 points (99.1% liked)

Comic Strips

13103 readers
3124 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 60 points 5 days ago (6 children)

queueing

Oh. Great. 5 vowels in a row. The language needed that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Basically the opposite of Polish

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Slovak has the word for ice cream which is zmzrlina with 5 consonants in a row

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I'm curious why slovak and czech language developed to use mainly consonants?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's because of R and L and to a lesser extent S. These are "syllabic consonants" (other languages have different ones, depends on pronunciation) which can take up the role vowels usually do because they can be stretched to an arbitrary length unlike other consonants.

Apparently English also has these, such as the M in rhythm or L in awful (the U is silent, so it falls on the L to form the syllable).

Honestly one of my life's greatest achievements in life was that I once used this to convince a Brazillian guy that Czech does actually make sense =D

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Well, thanks for the thorough answer!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Oh Slovenian has you beat here. We have 2 words with only consonants and 6 letters. That being vzbrst and sntntn. So yeah...

Edit: I just remembered zmrzlina also used to be the word for ice cream here about 200 years ago. Similar to it we also then have zmrznjen (frozen) for 6 conconants in a row with basicaly the same root of the word.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Just two? Cute. Czech has entire sentences without consonants.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh well I forgot to say they are 6 letter words but sure give me an example of such a sentence.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Chrt pln skvrn vtrhl skrz trs chrp v čtvrť Krč.

or

Blb vlk pln žbrnd zdrhl hrd z mlh Brd skrz vrch Smrk v čtvrť srn Krč.

The most commonly known one is

Strč prst skrz krk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Cool. Still no 6 letter word with only conconants.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Čtvrtsmršť, scvrnkls, čtvrthrst, cmrndls, zmrzls... take your pick.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

It doesn't even have a vowel!

Tsk tsk, Hobbes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Oh yeah sadly not wirh many high scoring letters. We also have a bunch of other words with just consonants. Like čmrlj, smrt, vrt, prt.... Probably many more I just cannot think of.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I can add Wrzeszcz for perspective. It may not be in a row, but no 8 letter word should have 3 zs

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Zmrzlina would like to have a word with you, only 2 Zs but 5 consonants in a row

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

sir digby chicken ceaser salad!