tracasserie
n. a state of disturbance or annoyance

infamation
n. reproach

alienigenate
adj. born in a foreign country

baragouin
n. language so altered in sound or sense as not to be generally understood

‘It is a fact,’ wrote Stephen Spender, after trying to write a book about interwar Berlin, ‘that all the best German jokes are unconscious.’ He instanced the expostulation of the German conductor Hans Richter after a difficult rehearsal with the London Philharmonic Orchestra: ‘Up with your damned nonsense will I put twice, or perhaps once, but sometimes always, by God, never!’

— Paul Johnson, Humorists, 2011

In his 1967 book Beyond Language, Dmitri Borgmann points out that every permutation of the three words ONE, MAY, and SAW produces a valid English sentence:

1. ONE MAY SAW. (An individual has the privilege of performing the action of sawing some object, such as a wooden log.)
2. ONE SAW MAY. (One person saw the girl whose first name is ‘May’.)
3. MAY ONE SAW? (Is one permitted to saw wood?)
4. MAY SAW ONE. (A girl named ‘May’ saw some object, previously mentioned, that is regarded as belonging to a group of objects of like character.)
5. SAW ONE, MAY! (Cut a log of wood in half, May, by sawing through it!)
6. SAW MAY ONE! (Saw a log of wood for May, Buster!)

In Word Ways, David Morice notes that BILL, PAT, and SUE can produce 12 valid three-word sentences, distinguished by capitalization and comma placement. Each item in the first group corresponds in meaning to one in the second:

Bill, pat Sue.     Pat Sue, Bill.
Bill, sue Pat.     Sue Pat, Bill.
Sue, bill Pat.     Bill Pat, Sue.
Sue, pat Bill.     Pat Bill, Sue.
Pat, bill Sue.     Bill Sue, Pat.
Pat, sue Bill.     Sue Bill, Pat.

(David Morice, “Kickshaws,” Word Ways 26:2 [May 1993], 105-117.)

Two hundred kilometers west of Pretoria is a farm called Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein. The name, the longest place name in South Africa, means “the spring where two buffaloes were shot stone dead with one shot.”

As a daughter language of Dutch, Afrikaans is capable of almost endless compounding, at least in principle. In his 1982 Total Book of South African Records, Eric Rosenthal claims that the longest word in the language is Tweedehandse­motor­verkoops­manne­vakbond­stakings­vergadering­sameroepers­toespraak­skrywers­pers­verklaring­uitreikings­media­konferensie­aankondiging, “issuable media conference’s announcement at a press release regarding the convener’s speech at a secondhand car dealership union’s strike meeting.” But, as with many such records, the word was contrived expressly and is not in common use.