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I was driving past the village of Hampsthwaite the other day, and happened to spot the six consecutive consonants in the middle. It set me wondering whether this was the most possible, and if not, which word contains the maximum number?

RegDwigнt
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Brian Hooper
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    One could argue (mostly unsuccessfully) that 'syzygy' is nothing but consonants. – oosterwal Mar 16 '11 at 21:43
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    Many of these words do not actually have that many sonsonant phonemes in a row. th is only one sound, so hampsthwaite only has five consonants in a row. Catchphrase only has four consonant phonemes in a row, and so on. – Peter Olson Jul 09 '11 at 20:14
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    It’s kind of stretching things to call “w” a consonant there. After all, “way” is a triphthong. – tchrist May 16 '12 at 00:29
  • @PeterOlson Catchphrase has only three consonant phonemes in a row: /tʃ/, /f/, and /r/. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 07 '15 at 11:54

3 Answers3

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Archchronicler, catchphrase, eschscholtzia, latchstring, lengthsman, and postphthisic each have six consonants in a row.

HIRSCHSPRUNG'S (DISEASE) has seven consecutive consonants, as does SCHTSCHUROWSKIA. The shortest such word is TSKTSKS. All of these words can be found in major English dictionaries.

n0nChun
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Foreign proper names are probably your safest bet. I always liked Chruschtschov though Khrushchev is the more common transliteration. Wikipedia has a dedicated section that lists a few more:

Twelfthstreet (normally two words but sometimes written as one, as in a song title; Eighthstreet is feasible by analogy), and Hirschsprung, as in Hirschsprung's disease (though this is after a Danish surname). The scientific name of the white (or Tubergen) squill is Scilla mischtschenkoana, and the transliterations of several Russian names, such as Tischtschenko, contain the same constellation of seven consonants.

RegDwigнt
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Sorry if this is a tad off-center, but the longest sequence of typographic (as opposed to phonologic) consonants in a single syllable may be five, in the words strengths and lengths. (Strengths may be the one-syllable word with the largest number of [spelled] consonants: 8.)

H Stephen Straight
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  • BTW, strengths and lengths might also be among the words with the longest sequence of phonologic consonants: 4. Specifically, eng, k, th, s – H Stephen Straight May 15 '12 at 23:59
  • Twelfths also ends in four consonant sounds: l, f, th, s. So does sixths: k, s, th, s. – tchrist Jan 03 '13 at 10:04
  • @HStephenStraight Strengths and lengths do not have four consecutive phonemic consonants, though—at least to me, they are /strεŋθz/ and /lεŋθz/, with no /k/ in either. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 07 '15 at 11:51
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Phonemic consonants, maybe not (if [ŋ] is not phonemically /ng/), but phonetic consonants, definitely yes, in every pronunciation of these words I have ever heard that contains [ŋ] (as opposed to [n]). – H Stephen Straight Jul 08 '15 at 22:15
  • If we’re talking narrow phonetics, then probably five: [sʈɻʷε͜ẽŋɡ̊d̥͡θs] (unless you consider affricates like [d̥͡θ] to be only one consonant phonetically, which I wouldn’t). But at least when I say the words, the release of the [ŋ] is no more perceptible or salient than the pre-fricative stage of the intradental articulation, if it’s there at all, which it isn’t always (the [ŋ] is sometimes more like [ɰ̃] with no closure). Neither is audible or prominent to warrant being included in any but quite narrow phonetic transcription. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 08 '15 at 22:56
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Your use of IPA differs from mine, it seems. I take voiceless [g] to be [k], even in the narrowest of transcriptions. Also, I use tie bars to indicate that the tied symbols constitute a single phone even in the narrowest of transcriptions, the best examples being affricates. More significantly, perhaps, I have always seen the [k] in this word as a synchronic example of epenthesis, in this case resulting in what sounds like a /k/ inserted between [ŋ] and [θ]. Of course, the [k] is not phonemic in this case, but a novice phonemic transcriber might easily mistake it for such. – H Stephen Straight Jul 11 '15 at 21:28
  • @HStephenStraight Voiceless but lenis [ɡ̊] is phonetically different from voiceless, fortis [k], though the difference is of course entirely unphonemic (in all languages, as far as I know). In a position between [ŋ] and [θ], a voiced stop will inevitably get unvoiced, but not fortis. As for the bars, [dθ] (no bars right now, typing on phone) is of course an affricate, but I use them also in narrow phonetic transcription for monomoraic vowels that nonetheless change their quality throughout their duration. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 11 '15 at 21:45
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Thank you for helping me apply the (to me previously opaque) fortis/lenis distinction. I accept your transcription in full, but I still believe that a voiceless [g], no matter how lenis, will stick out for many if not all listeners as an epenthetic /k/, just as the lenis [p] in the pronunciation of the word pumkin gave rise to the respelling of the word. – H Stephen Straight Jul 13 '15 at 22:35