12

Is "novecentonovantanovemilanovecentonovantanove" one word? (That's what Treccani seems to suggest, mentioning for example the number "seicentocinquantaquattromilatrecentoventuno", i.e. 654321).

Or should it be "novecentonovantanovemila novecentonovantanove"?

Or "novecento novantanove mila novecento novantanove" (seriously?)? Or in a still different way?

Why?

Is there any agreement at all among linguists regarding rules for writing number words in Italian?

What is the longest single-word number in Italian, agreed upon by linguists/dictionaries? "Quattrocentoquarantaquattromilaquattrocentoquarantaquattro"?

Note that "quattrocentoquarantaquattromilaquattrocentoquarantaquattro" would beat "precipitevolissimevolmente" 58-26 in terms of number of characters.

@egreg

"Centomila" is one word, it is a cardinal numeral adjective; "un milione" is made of two words: "un", masculine indeterminative article, and "milione", masculine noun.

You say "centomila unità" but "un milione di unità" (not "unmilione unità"). Not quite the same.

Also note that 999999 can also be seen as 11110100001000111111 in the binary system, i.e.

219 + 218 + 217 + 216 + 214 + 29 + 25 + 24 + 23 + 22 + 21 + 20

or, by setting b = 2,

1 · b19 + 1 · b18 + 1 · b17 + 1 · b16 + 0 · b15 + 1 · b14 + 0 · b13 + 0 · b12 + 0 · b11 + 0 · b10 + 1 · b9 + 0 · b8 + 0 · b7 + 0 · b6 + 1 · b5 + 1 · b4 + 1 · b3 + 1 · b2 + 1 · b1 + 1 · b0

but my understanding is that these are mathematical representations, not words as used in linguistics.

As to "tutt'al più", this is a "locuzione" (which is made of at least two words) while "tuttalpiù" is one word (1, 2, 3). Of course these are all linguistic conventions, not laws of nature.

  • rando., seicentocinquantaquattromilatrecentoventuno potrebbe non essere un'unica parola, ma le rappresentazione scritta di più parole, però non ho referenze da citare al riguardo. – Kyriakos Kyritsis Feb 04 '14 at 22:39
  • I believe this is not a concern because you usually don't find such words in written Italian; you'd use integer literals instead. However when speaking I usually put small pauses after (and sometimes before) milioni, mila etc. So I'd write Quattrocentoquarantaquattro milioni quattrocentoquarantaquattromila quattrocentoquarantaquattro if I wanted to give a hint on how I pronounce it. I believe these words aren't counted in the "which is the longest word of the Italian language" simply because their size can be come as big as you want. – Bakuriu Feb 05 '14 at 07:59
  • 3
    in italy, when you sign a checque of 999999 euro, you must write the amount also in letters and you write it as one word. – rosco Feb 05 '14 at 14:01
  • 1
    @rosco This is a good point: in Italy it might happen that you are required to write numbers in letters (and this is also an answer to Bakuriu's remark). But this is not sufficient to guarantee that 999999 is one word: in fact, apparently, according to Treccani 1000000 does not generate one word but two, "un milione" (and not "unmilione"). –  Feb 05 '14 at 14:03
  • 3
    @randomatlabuser - when you sign a checque for sure you write a single word (without blanks). it is to avoid fraud from the people will receive the checque itself :) – rosco Feb 05 '14 at 16:34
  • 1
    @rosco True, I meant that it is not necessarily correct from a linguistic point of view but yes, cheque amounts are supposed to be written without blanks, as one word. Thank you for highlighting that. –  Feb 05 '14 at 16:45
  • 1
    @randomatlabuser I was giving some examples just to illustrate my opinion that the problem is ill-posed: without a clear definition of what a word is, it's impossible to decide; but it's quite difficult to agree on a definition of word either. – egreg Feb 06 '14 at 14:52
  • 1
    @egreg Honestly I am not sure I understand your point: a word is a string of letters without blanks which represents a distinct meaningful element of speech. It can be a lemma or the inflected form of a lemma … I think we can agree on that? –  Feb 06 '14 at 17:43
  • @randomatlabuser No, I don't agree and tutt'al più or per lo meno tell me your definition is incorrect. – egreg Feb 06 '14 at 18:17
  • 2
    @egreg We will agree to disagree then. My understanding is that "tutt'al più" and "per lo meno" are made of three words while "tuttalpiù" and "perlomeno" are single words. –  Feb 06 '14 at 18:33
  • @randomatlabuser They are just alternative orthographies and the meaning is exactly the same. – egreg Feb 06 '14 at 18:39
  • 1
    @egreg As reported above, according to Treccani "tutt'al più" is a "locuzione" which is made of at least two words. Can you produce sources suggesting the contrary? –  Feb 06 '14 at 19:36
  • I don't remember having read nor heard of a rule saying that there should be no spaces in amounts written on cheques in Italy, but, e.g., here you can read that centoventiquattro e cinquantasei centesimi is acceptable, and I myself must have signed cheques in lire starting with un milione Ncento..., and they have never been returned – Walter Tross Feb 09 '14 at 00:49

3 Answers3

5

I don't think it is one word, but, to begin with, we should agree on the definition of what a word is. Just to make an example from the opposite side, is tutt'al più one word or three? In my opinion this is one word that's written in a peculiar way.

To come to numerals, think to unmilione that would be so written on a check because of legal matters (well, € 1 000 000 would be quite an amount), but in a novel one would write un milione di euro. Is it one word, now?

I often present Mark Twain's

Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschaft

asking whether it is a word or not. In order to be a word, it should have a meaning: can you assign one? Or is vorpale a word? It appears in an Italian translation of Carrol's Jabberwocky (vorpal in the original). Does the presence in a written text guarantee this cluster of letters the status of word? Is ilprogrammadicuinonmenzionomaiilnome one word? Who knows me clearly understands what computer program I'm referring to, but is that a word or many?

We might argue that 999999 is one word because of how it's written. On the other hand, this might be considered just an acronym like СССР, where the three initial letter represent different values:

Союз Советских Социалистических Республик

which are four distinct words. Note that, mathematically, 999999 is an acronym, because it stands for

9 + 9 · b + 9 · b2 + 9 · b3 + 9 · b4 + 9 · b5 + 9 · b6

where b is ten. Is it a word?

egreg
  • 17,991
  • 3
  • 28
  • 67
  • I disagree with the end of this answer. Mathematically a number is definitely not an acronym, but a single object. The fact that you can decompose it is irrelevant, also because your last point only holds for b<999999. – nico Feb 06 '14 at 07:23
  • @nico I was talking about the representation of the number, not about the number. – egreg Feb 06 '14 at 07:43
  • I hope Mark Twain didn't write it that way. It should be "konstantinopolitanische Dudelsackpfeifenmachergesellschaft" – Walter Tross Feb 08 '14 at 23:30
  • @WalterTross Mark Twain's spelling was deliberately slightly wrong. Actually the real spelling was Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft, I checked in my Penguin edition of the Connecticut Yankee. – egreg Feb 08 '14 at 23:34
  • Well, so apart from making one word out of two, and using an initial C (which might have been correct at that time), he let 4 more mistakes sneak in – Walter Tross Feb 08 '14 at 23:38
  • @WalterTross You should read what Mark Twain wrote about German. For instance http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html I'm not defending his position; I just like that example for illustrating the difficulties of defining the concept of word. – egreg Feb 08 '14 at 23:42
  • talking about German is like talking about mathematics, you can make people, who don't know it, laugh (oh, wow, I managed to put a verb at the end like in German - Italian would have made better, here!) Well, Germans laughs a bit too, reading Mark Twain, but only with half of their mouth – Walter Tross Feb 08 '14 at 23:52
  • oops, didn't know you are a mathematician :-) (maybe didn't think you are because you started from the lowest exponent of b...) – Walter Tross Feb 09 '14 at 00:00
  • 1
    @WalterTross I started from the lowest exponent because I'm a mathematician. ;-) – egreg Feb 09 '14 at 00:17
3

In italiano

"novecentonovantanovemilanovecentonovantanove"

alle volte è una sola parola, alle volte è invece

"novecentonovantanovemila e novecentonovantanove"

ergo tre parole, dipende dal contesto!

Saluti

P.S.=In tutti e due i casi il numero è "999999"

mle
  • 317
  • 1
  • 11
  • 2
    Il tuo secondo esempio, semmai, è composto da tre parole. Ma hai seguito la discussione preesistente sul fatto che non è neppure ovvio che sia sufficiente vedere se ci sono degli spazi per decidere se qualcosa è una parola o no? – DaG Feb 25 '14 at 17:12
0

Every number before 1.000.000 is written as a single word, after that "un milione" si added in front, but as a different word

user4635
  • 1