Re: 8-syllable or more words

From: Chris Kern (chriskern99_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 08/30/04 

Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 16:51:16 +0900

On 29 Aug 2004 18:23:44 -0700, aesthete8@hotmail.com (aesthete8)
posted the following:

>Considering that haiku cannot use such words, are there very many of them?

It depends on what you consider a "word". Is "yamatonadeshiko" one
word or two? How about "watakushiooyake"? Is "atatakanakatta" a
word?

>In historic Japan, was the length of words in general longer/shorter?

Hmm...without the Chinese loan vocabulary I think that words tended to
be longer -- however, you did not have the 12-kanji compounds and the
like that we see now.

-Chris