A monosyllabic language is a

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

in which

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

s predominantly consist of a single

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

. An example of a monosyllabic language would be

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

or Vietnamese, Burmese or Sumerian. Monosyllabism is the name for the property of single-syllable word form. The natural complement of monosyllabism is polysyllabism. Whether a language is monosyllabic or not sometimes depends on the definition of "word", which is far from being a settled matter among linguists. For example, Modern Chinese (Mandarin) is "monosyllabic" if each written

Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...

is considered a word; which is justified by observing that most characters have proper meaning(s) (even if very generic and ambiguous). However, most entries in a Chinese

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

are compounds of two or more characters; if those entries are taken as the "words", then Mandarin is not truly monosyllabic, only its

morphemes A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

are..

Single-vowel form

monosyllable In linguistics, a monosyllable is a word or utterance of only one syllable. It is most commonly studied in the fields of phonology and morphology. The word has originated from the Greek language Greek (, ; , ) is an Indo-European languages, Ind ...

may be complex and include seven or more consonants and a vowel (CCCCVCCC or CCCVCCC as in English "strengths") or be as simple as a single vowel or a

syllabic consonant A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''awful'', respectively. To represe ...

. Few known recorded languages preserve simple CV forms which apparently are fully functional roots conveying meaning, ''i.e.'' are words—but are ''not'' the reductions from earlier complex forms that we find in Mandarin Chinese CV forms, almost always derived with tonal and phonological modifications from Sino-Tibetan *(C)CV(C)(C)/(V) forms.

Suffix and prefix

Monosyllabic languages typically lack suffixes and prefixes that can be added to words to alter their meaning or time. Instead, it is frequently determined by context and/or other words. For instance in Vietnamese:

References

{{reflist Linguistic typology Phonotactics