WORDS THAT TROUBLE THE TONGUE.
Drimtaidhvickhillichattan is the name of a small hamlet in the Isle of Mull containing not more than a dozen inhabitants. How they pronounce it is a mystery only to be solved by some one acquainted with Gaelic, but the fact that the Scots are a nation of few words seems easy to explain, if they have many such words as the above in their language.
A sample of Welsh nomenclature is Mynyddywllyn, which is the name of a parish close to Cardiff, whilst another of the same kind is Llanfairpwllgwngyll.
Perhaps, however, the Germans may be fairly said to carry off the palm in word-coining. How is this for a specimen— Constaninopelischerdudlelsackpfeifer? or this one, Jungfrauenzimmerdurchschwindersuchtoedungs?
The first means a Constantinopolitan bagpipe-player, and the last is the name of a young ladies' club which adorns the brass plate of the door of a house in Cologne to this day.
Rabelais gives the following name to a particular book which was supposed to be in the library of Pantagruel's medical student friend Victor—"Antipericatametanaparbeugedanptecribrationes Toordicantium"; whilst Anantachaturdasivratakatha is an actual Sanscrit word to be found in any Sanscrit dictionary, and the word Cluninstaridysarchedes occurs in the works of Plautus, the Latin comedy writer.
Now, most of the above words can be pronounced by ordinary persons with a week's training or so; so could this one, Kagwadawwacomergishearg, which was the Christian name of one of the Indian chiefs who died at Wisconsin a little while ago; but, studying long and hard as they will, not one person in a million will ever succeed in correctly pronouncing the name of Tschlsi, King of Wahuma. The best way to set about it is to sneeze violently, and to try to work in the l sound towards the end.