Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Today in the American English Pronunciation Q&A Meetup, someone asked how to pronounce this word, “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” I learned from Wikipedia that it’s a made-up word and “the longest word in the English language published in a popular dictionary, Oxford Dictionaries” (Dictionary.com). It’s 45 letters long and you may not encounter another word that long in your daily life, but you may encounter very long words that look overwhelming to pronounce. I thought this would be a good time to describes the steps I take when I come across words that are very long and unfamiliar.
I demonstrated this in the post-Meetup video for today’s words.
Step-by-Step
1. Divide into chunks of words you recognize either as whole words or parts of words.
pneumono ultra microscopic silico volcano coni osis
2. Divide those chunks into syllables.
pneu mo no ul tra mi cro sco pic sil i co vol ca no co ni o sis
3. Look the complete word up in the dictionary. Look for primary stress.
Primary stress is indicated in different ways in different dictionaries. Primary stress means the vowel in that syllable is pronounced with a higher pitch (Hz) and has a longer duration.
Secondary stress means the vowel in that syllable has a longer duration but does not go up higher in pitch. With very long words, don’t worry too much about getting the secondary stress as correct as the primary stress.
Merriam-Webster uses the traditional small straight line at the top left of the first letter of the syllable.
Dictionary.com uses the same marks when you choose “Show IPA” but uses bold when it’s showing you the non-IPA symbol version of spelling it the way it sounds. The secondary stress is indicated by not using italics, which I think is confusing.
The two dictionaries don’t totally agree but are close. When you play the audio in each dictionary, the Merriam-Webster version takes a tiny pause between the word chunks, which I think makes it easier to understand where those word boundaries are.
4. Apply the stress to your word chunks.
It’s easier to imagine pronouncing a series of words with stress than a long list of syllables.
pneumono ultra microscopic silico volcano coni osis