According to one of my favourite sites, Wikipedia, the longest English word is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Apparently the word was invented as a hoax, but is now used to reflect the original 'joke' meaning - something medical to do with the lungs. English has one of the most extensive vocabularies of any language, but a lot of words are through modification - adding an 'un' here and a 'ness' there, a subtle 'dis' and a discrete 'ly'. And when you consider many of our words come from German, French and Latin, I wonder if we English-speakers really are as complicated as we like to think? It may be rather dis-avantage-ous to believe so.
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