12

I've heard about this word

контрвзбзднуть

which has 9 consonants in a row. Obviously this word doesn't exist. Which real word(s) has the longest consonant cluster?

Quassnoi
  • 53,460
  • 4
  • 94
  • 183
Armen Tsirunyan
  • 5,367
  • 1
  • 30
  • 49

2 Answers2

22

Let's face the truth: we're all from Stack Overflow here.

$ egrep '[бвгджзклмнпрстфхцчшщ]{6,}' lopatin.txt

адъюнктство, —а
попразднство, —а
предпразднство, —а
Quassnoi
  • 53,460
  • 4
  • 94
  • 183
  • Why not include ь? – Armen Tsirunyan Jun 19 '12 at 12:49
  • 4
    I'm not from Stack Overflow. :P – Alenanno Jun 19 '12 at 12:50
  • @Armen: it's not a consonant. Historically, it's a vowel, currently, it's a modifier. Including ь and ъ additionally yields фольксштурм (and derived words) and юрисконсультство. – Quassnoi Jun 19 '12 at 12:55
  • @Quassnoi: If we found a word with 8 consecutive consonants including ь, we'd know it has 7 consecutive consonant sounds. ъ is useless here because it can appear only after prefixes before yotated vowels – Armen Tsirunyan Jun 19 '12 at 13:07
  • @ArmenTsirunyan: This would lead us too far away into amazing world of phonology controversies. How many consecutive consonant sounds are in words разом and Эразм and why? – Quassnoi Jun 19 '12 at 13:22
  • @Quassnoi: I pronounce them differently. I pronounce a shwa in разом, and don't pronounce anything between р and м in Эразм – Armen Tsirunyan Jun 19 '12 at 13:25
  • @Armen: most Russians pronounce a shwa in both words. – Quassnoi Jun 19 '12 at 13:26
  • @Quassnoi: I suppose you mean all words ending in зм. I do not agree that most Russians pronounce a shwa between these consonants. Of course, some do, but it's not that difficult a cluster, so many don't. – Armen Tsirunyan Jun 19 '12 at 13:38
  • @ArmenTsirunyan: that's exactly what I meant by phonology controversies :) – Quassnoi Jun 19 '12 at 13:46
  • @Quassnoi But the schwa is not a consonant, it's still a vowel sound, isn't it? – Alenanno Jun 19 '12 at 13:58
  • @Alenanno: Indeed, and if it's there, it breaks the consonant cluster :) – Armen Tsirunyan Jun 19 '12 at 14:01
  • 2
    @Alenanno: of course, but if we count sounds and not letters we should define what to count, and it's not that easy. There are several translations of William Blake's "Tiger" into Russian, one of them reads: Тигр, о тигр, светло горящий, and another one: Тигр, тигр, жгучий страх. The first reading forbids a schwa between the consonants, the second one requires it. – Quassnoi Jun 19 '12 at 14:04
  • Quassnoi, It's an amazingly nice method that you've used! That's what should be called mathematical linguistics :) Could you just try with 8 consonants while allowing ь please? – texnic Jun 19 '12 at 14:06
  • 1
    @texnic: {6,} means "six or more". – Quassnoi Jun 19 '12 at 14:07
  • nobody asked so... where did you get lopatin.txt and what is it? – confiq Apr 06 '14 at 07:24
3

With 5 consonants in a row, I'd say:

  • контрпример, kontrprimer (counterexample).
  • контрпредложение, kontrpredlozhenie (counteroffer).
  • контрпривод, kontrprivod (countershaft).
  • контрприказ, kontrprikaz (countermand).

(taken from the dictionary)

Alenanno
  • 1,126
  • 2
  • 16
  • 34