Three hours to read: the longest word in the English language has been named

The record-breaking longest word in the English language, comprising nearly 190 thousand letters, is virtually never used in everyday communication and has no practical application. This opinion was expressed by linguist Laurel MacKenzie from New York University.

As reported by BAKU.WS with reference to RIA Novosti, the word in question is the chemical name of the largest known protein molecule. Its length is 189,819 characters, and fully pronouncing such a term can take over three hours.

According to Laurel MacKenzie, it is difficult to imagine real circumstances in which such a word could be used in colloquial or professional speech. The expert believes that such a sequence of letters resembles an expanded chemical formula more than a familiar linguistic unit.

The specialist noted that the question of whether such constructions should be recognized as full-fledged words remains debatable. Much depends on which criteria are applied: whether frequency of use, necessity of usage, and the presence of a practical function in the language are taken into account.

Additionally, the scholar pointed out that in modern science there is no separate field that officially deals with identifying and registering the longest words. Nevertheless, such linguistic phenomena often attract the attention of dictionary compilers and lexicography researchers.

In the expert's opinion, interest in such records is more of an educational nature and helps to better understand the boundaries of the language system, rather than having any practical significance for communication.