Quote Originally Posted by mudrets View Post
My question was not whether Russian words are long, nor did I intend to belittle the Russian language or its speakers. I wanted to know whether Russians are sometimes impeded by frequent, everyday words that have many syllables.
It's worth remembering that unstressed syllables in Russian are invariably significantly reduced. ( i think I read somewhere that the typical length of an unstressed syllable is 1/3.5 of a stressed syllable, as opposed to a maximum average ratio of 1:2.5 in English) This is why unstressed я,и,е and а,о,ы all sound the same respectively. So most syllables in long words are skimmed, or in some cases virtually swallowed completely.

Take for example the name of the footballer Билялетдинов.

Russian commentators pronouce this like:
билили - ДИнов -> бьльль -ДИнов -> бьль -ДИнов
with the t almost always being omitted/swallowed.

Their English counterparts or the other hand conscientiously enunciate and differentiate every last letter - бил-я-'лет-ди-нов.

So although most words aren't technically shortened, it seems like native speakers can still get them out pretty quickly.

Итак, кроме того, чтобы подсчитывать буквы, по-моему интересно было бы еще вынуть секундомеры или, может, вымеривать как много двигается язык и т.п.