Tongue Twisters (1/2): Long Words and Pronunciation Practice Materials

There’s quite a bit of stumbling over Russian words. Whether it’s due to not knowing where the stress falls, strange sounds, or simply because they’re tongue twisters. This may sound exaggerated, but that’s just what they’re called. Here are difficult and long words that may—or may not—trip up your tongue.

Difficult words

This is straightforward: see for yourself if these are hard.

• The Hardest Russian Words to Pronounce (Russian with Tatiana, 2019, 7 m)
• Pronouncing Hardest Russian Words (Living Life With The Shirins, 2019, 11 m)
• 10 Most Difficult Russian Words (Russian with Nastya, 2019, 6 m), from the same channel: 10 Russian Words That You Pronounce Incorrectly (2019, 5 m)
• The 10 Hardest Russian Words to Pronounce (Tsar Experience, 2018, 6 m)
• The 10 Hardest Russian Words to Pronounce (Conor Clyne, 2018, 6 m)
• Learn the Top 10 Hardest Russian Words to Pronounce (RussianPod101, 2015, 5 m)

Long words

Russian words are, on average, just a bit longer than Dutch ones. The difference is minimal according to this Distribution of Word Lengths in Various Languages, but many students feel otherwise.

Человеконенавистничество

Even Hélène ( Элен) found Russian words to be on the long side. Or even сумасшедшие—crazy. Check out Я только что осознала, что много ваших русских слов сумасшедшие (2020, 10 m). The words in question appear from 5:33, including человеконенавистничество (misanthropy/hatred of humanity). As a bonus, there’s a bit of French with anticonstitutionnellement (25 letters).

Достопримечательность

The word достопримечательность (tourist attraction) is often cited as an example, though it’s three letters shorter (21) than человеконенавистничество. Tourist attraction is, perhaps, a more useful word.

See Достопримечательность. What a Word! (Amazing Russian, 2017, 15 m). It also appears in Strange Words in Russian (Russian Progress, 2020, 9 m).

Превысокомногорассмотрительствующий

If you happen to know the Russian word for preparation tasks for a children’s carnival procession, do let us know. This is an example from Longest words (Wikipedia), which also lists Russian counterparts. Monsters like превысокомногорассмотрительствующий (35 letters), тысячево­сьмисот­восьми­десяти­девяти­микро­метровый (46), and тетра­гидро­пиранил­цикло­пентил­тетра­гидро­пиридо­пириди­новая (55).

On What is the longest word in Russian? (Quora, 2019), it’s explained why, in principle, the longest word in Russian could be infinite.

Pronunciation and reading

Long words are always tied to pronunciation in the following video (Boost Your Russian, 2019, 20 m). Starting with соответственно, неудовлетворительно, одиннадцатиклассница, and then our good old tourist attraction word, the list grows longer, ending with превысокомногорассмотрительствующий.

Denis Fedorov (2017, 16 m) discusses reading long words, with a great long sentence:

‘First, one tries to read it in full, then mumbles something, then stutters for several times, and then pronounces the word so completely wrong that you think there is no more wrong way to pronounce the word.’

It only gets better from there.

More tips on reading long words, with a focus on learning and memorizing vocabulary, in Russian vocabulary made easy: are Russian words that hard? (Anna Cher, 2019, 7 m).

Short

Don’t get the idea that it’s always hard or long. Russian also holds the world record for shortest sentence, with just 3 letters.

Э, а я?!
(Hey, what about me/and me?)
It’s also a song, by Надежда Ангарская (2018).

More

• 8 of the longest, most challenging Russian words (Russia Beyond, 2018)
• The Longest and Hardest Words in the Russian Language (Culture Trip, 2018)