Triple letters (meaning, quote, similar, dictionary)

[jtur88]

I believe standard English orthography absolutely prohibits any triple letter combinations in compound words, so a mandatory hyphen makes a pill-loving person out of a hypochondriac. Similarly, 'frillless' has to be 'frill-less' and 'freeest' simply 'freest'.

German orthographical reforn in 1996, though, made triple letter in German much more common, nearly abolishing the character ß and making Flussschifffahrt possible from the old Flußschiffahrt.

Welsh regularly uses four L's, using a double L as a guttural phoneme dissimilar to the L sound, and compounding it in words. Well known from the town name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch.

Estonian has ' Jäääär', which even in English ('ice-edge') requires a hyphen for clarity.

The only European language I know of that has a triple letter in a word that is not compounded is the common Romanian word "copiii", meaning children's. (Possessive form of the plural of child, 'copi', which by itself is an interesting etymology, a child being equated to a copy of the parents.) Similarly, 'of the sons' is 'fiii'.

[Fred314X]

The only place name in the United States with a triple letter is the Hawaiian town of Kaaawa.

[jtur88]

Ka'a'awa does not have any triple letters. The As are separated by apostrophes, when written correctly. The apostrophes are consonantal phonemes, representing a glottal stop, which is not conventionally used in English. We would write "We eat fish", and most speakers would put a Hawaiian glottal stop between the two Es, on order to avoid eliding them.

If the original linguists who transliterated Hawaiian to the Roman alphabet had arbitrarily decided to use Q instead of an apoostrophe, the city would be spelled Kaqaqawa.

If you disregard the apostrophe, then there is an English word that has a quadruple letter combination, in "Bill'll eat fish, too."

[harry chickpea]

Look at an old phone book sometime for all the names starting out with multiples of the letter "a" to be in the "A" listings.

At the opposite end, there is zzz

[Fred314X]

Originally Posted by jtur88

Ka'a'awa does not have any triple letters. The As are separated by apostrophes, when written correctly. The apostrophes are consonantal phonemes, representing a glottal stop, which is not conventionally used in English. We would write "We eat fish", and most speakers would put a Hawaiian glottal stop between the two Es, on order to avoid eliding them.

If the original linguists who transliterated Hawaiian to the Roman alphabet had arbitrarily decided to use Q instead of an apoostrophe, the city would be spelled Kaqaqawa.

If you disregard the apostrophe, then there is an English word that has a quadruple letter combination, in "Bill'll eat fish, too."

I stand corrected! In my (potentially pathetic) defense, I can only say that I was going by the official U.S. zip code guide, which publishes the name of the town without any apostrophes.