気持ちいい Interesting Observation (to me, at least!)

気持ちいい, or kimochiii in romaji, has piqued my interest because I don’t think I’ve ever come across a word in any language that has three of the same vowels in a row in it.

For example, in English, we have plenty of “two consecutive same vowel” words like “food” and “bleed,” but nothing like “foood” or “bleeed.” I’m guessing that 気持ちいい (“good feeling”) is basically a compound word of “feeling” and “good” crammed together where the “chi” meets the “ii.” And it’s fun to pronounce because you’re saying the “i” vowel three times as long: “kimocheeeeeee!”

Does anyone have an example of a word in any language that is constructed by placing three of the same vowel (or even consonant?) next to each other? Just staying curious!

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女王 from level 2.

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There’s a famous example in Russian: “длинношеее (животное)”, meaning “long-necked” (animal).

“dlinnoshejeje”

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In German it’s fairly common to have words with 3 identical characters in a row. It happens when a word that ends with a double character gets combined with a word that starts with the same letter. Here is a nice blogpost; you may not understand anything but you can try and spot the words!
It even talks about the same phenomenon in Dutch (where it doesn’t seem to be as frequent but still occurs).

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In English there are hyphenated words like cross-section or bee-eater, shell-less, etc. where you can get these three repeated consonants or vowels.

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Thanks for the link! In the Dutch section, I see that “Stresssituationen” is a good, understandable example.

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It’s funny before I learned this word properly, I used to think that 気持ち meant “feeling” (in general) or “good feeling” based on context. I thought that when they said 気持ちいい in anime they were just extending the final い vowel for emphasis. It’s kind of a neat word, and it makes a lot more sense now that I know that 気持ち and 気持ちいい are two different things. :laughing:

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Thanks. Very intuitive from what you wrote. I did an image search for длинношеее and I see pictures of various sauropods (not sure what contemporary names are, but as a kid, I knew these as diplodicus, aptosaurus, brontosaurus, brachiosaurus) and they all have very long necks to go with their long name!

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Excellent example–didn’t occur to me originally, probably because of the different hiragana used to represent the long “o” vowels. Regardless, exactly the kind of example I was hoping to see.

There’s a special case rule for this in Swedish, that you don’t spell the extra letter in such cases. Apparently it was decided that 2 identical letters was more than enough. :joy:

(from a pronunciation perspective it makes sense. There is nothing changed in the pronunciation between combination words that could have potentially had 3 letters, than a word with 2 letters in a row).

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We had a special rule for that in German as well (I think depending on whether there was a vowel or a consonant before the 3 letters, they would be shortened to 2 or something?) but in the last large language reform (some time in the 90’s) they apparently removed this rule altogether, and now there is no shortening any more. Which makes sense in terms of simplifying the language edge cases, but it admittedly looks a bit strange :rofl:

I was wondering about Finnish though; would they have 3 letters in a row? I know they have lots and lots of double letters, so maybe some triple letters are also in the mix? Does anybody know?

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There are compound words with 3 or 4 vowels in a row but with a hyphen in the middle, (and usually there’s a glottal stop or some pause or something between the two parts), e.g. pahaa-aavistamaton(unsuspecting), maa-alue(land area), keinopää-äänitys(binaural recording using dummy head microphone?), puu-ukko(wooden figure). (src of examples: Kielitoimiston sanakirja)

I also browsed jisho to find some interesting japanese words and put together a nonsensical sentence that is most likely completely wrong but it has 14 O or O-like sounds in a row: 鳳凰を覆う王を追おう

ほうおうをおおうおうをおおう, ~let’s chase the king covering a phoenix

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Hahaha, that’s amazing! It reminded me of the following sentence:

子子子子子子子子子子子子

Explanation

子子子子子子子子子子子子 is a different category: in Japanese, Chinese characters usually ha... | Hacker News

Just be aware that this story is from 900 A.D. or so, that’s why they were free to insert の when reading the sentence…

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Dutch has the words reëel (real/possible) and ideeën (ideas). I was actually surprised to read that mee-eter is written with a hyphen, I would have blindly used meeëter. That’s usually an indication the spelling changed in one of our regular spelling reforms (same holds for zee-egel (sea urchin), which I would have spelled as zeeëgel).

edit: I can add stuff as I think of it. All have 3 e’s though.
macrameeën (to macramé)
reeën (roe deer plural)
zeeën (seas)

Our best one though got killed by a spelling reform a few years back
reeëëelt with 5 e’s in a row. It’s spelled reeëneelt now. Was never a very useful word btw (roe deer callous).

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Not exactly the same, since the vowels are different, but there’s the famous “hääyöaie” with 7 consecutive vowels. Translates to ”wedding night intention” :joy:.

Edit: Also remembered ”vaa’alla”, but theres an apostrophe there…

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Along with “длинношеее” there can be created other words with “шеее” on the end… basically alsmost everything what’s related to neck.

Also another one: “зоообъединение” (zoo association), pronounced as “zooob"yedineniye”.

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It’s funny hearing about formal language reforms since that’s not a thing that could ever happen in English. I feel bad for all the people who learned to spell before the reform. :rofl: But at the same time, I’m glad for the Japanese language reform, so I get why it happens.

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" James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher** "

James, while John had had " had ", had had " had had "; " had had " had had a better effect on the teacher.

The sentence refers to two students, James and John, who are required by an English test to describe a man who had suffered from a cold in the past. John writes “The man had a cold”, which the teacher marks incorrect, while James writes the correct “The man had had a cold”. Since James’s answer was right, it had had a better effect on the teacher.

from wikipedia

sorry for tangent, but I am laughing myself silly now

also
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

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気持ちいい is technically 気持ち + いい (as in 良い).

But then there’s 憂鬱ゆううつ.

Words like bee-eater or cross-section are the closest that English comes to having triple letters. Aside from onomatopoeia, in any case.

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The volitional form of おおう (to cover) is おおおう.

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