Is there anything special about single vowel words?


I'm not sure if this is a useful question or not. But I was surprised to
notice まさか (masaka) was using a single vowel (a) for the whole word. The
surprise came from the connection to "bakana" (バカな) which apparently is two
words, so never mind that.

I set out to discover more of these single-vowel words in Japanese, but I
don't really know Japanese or how to search for such things. So I found a list
of words and analyzed them here
<https://colab.research.google.com/drive/194vb5Ajw4mMlUcb1HqF4YF2aP1LjeVlS>

This prints out:

[code]

    Found 22 single column words
    あなた
    うつむく
    からだ
    くぐる
    さまざま
    せめて
    そのもの
    そもそも
    そろそろ
    だから
    つくる
    つづく
    ところ
    どころ
    なかなか
    ながら
    ふつう
    まさか
    もともと
    ものの
    よほど
    わざわざ
    
[/code]

Which I guess is a cute tongue-twister. The question is - does this class of
words have a name? Are these words more poetic in a way? Are there other,
longer, words like this that I missed?




> Does this class of words have a name?

I don't think so. Do words like "banana" and "indivisibility" have a special
name in English?

> Are these words more poetic in a way?

As wordplay, a poem that contains many such words may exist somewhere, but
it's not popular at all.

> Are there other, longer, words like this that I missed?

Japanese has only 5 vowels, so there are tons of such examples. The ["top 3000
words" list you used](http://www.offbeatband.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/11/Japanese-Word-Frequency-List-1-3000.txt) contain many
words in kanji or katakana, which means you have already missed many simple
words with only one vowel, such as 魚 (sa-ka-na, "fish"), 知識 (chi-shi-ki,
"knowledge") and 男 (o-to-ko, "man"). If you don't know about kanji, please
learn about the [Japanese writing
system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system) first. They are
not particularly difficult to pronounce to me, either.

In Japanese, it's not that difficult to construct a long sentence that
contains only one vowel. I came up with this (28 o's):

> 大園桃子の母校の曽於高校の校章を覆おう。  
>  O-o-zo-no Mo-mo-ko-no bo-ko-o no So-o ko-o-ko-o no ko-o-sho-o o o-o-o-o.  
>  "Let's cover the emblem of Sō High School, [Momoko
> Ōzono](http://stage48.net/wiki/index.php/Ozono_Momoko)'s alma mater."

* * *

**EDIT:** I made a longer example for fun (53 a's)

> 雨傘が無かったから差さなかったら、朝から体が硬かったが、まあ戦ったら勝ったから、あからさまな差は無かったかな。
>
> A-ma-ga-sa ga na-ka-tta ka-ra sa-sa-na-ka-tta-ra, a-sa ka-ra ka-ra-da ga ka-
> ta-ka-tta ga, ma-a ta-ta-ka-tta-ra ka-tta ka-ra, a-ka-ra-sa-ma-na sa wa na-
> ka-tta ka-na.
>
> "I did not use an umbrella because I did not have one, so my body was stiff
> since this morning, but, well, I still fought and won, so I guess that made
> no obvious difference."




> Does this class of words have a name?

I don't think so. Do words like "banana" and "indivisibility" have a special
name in English?

> Are these words more poetic in a way?

As wordplay, a poem that contains many such words may exist somewhere, but
it's not popular at all.

> Are there other, longer, words like this that I missed?

Japanese has only 5 vowels, so there are tons of such examples. The ["top 3000
words" list you used](http://www.offbeatband.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/11/Japanese-Word-Frequency-List-1-3000.txt) contain many
words in kanji or katakana, which means you have already missed many simple
words with only one vowel, such as 魚 (sa-ka-na, "fish"), 知識 (chi-shi-ki,
"knowledge") and 男 (o-to-ko, "man"). If you don't know about kanji, please
learn about the [Japanese writing
system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system) first. They are
not particularly difficult to pronounce to me, either.

In Japanese, it's not that difficult to construct a long sentence that
contains only one vowel. I came up with this (28 o's):

> 大園桃子の母校の曽於高校の校章を覆おう。  
>  O-o-zo-no Mo-mo-ko-no bo-ko-o no So-o ko-o-ko-o no ko-o-sho-o o o-o-o-o.  
>  "Let's cover the emblem of Sō High School, [Momoko
> Ōzono](http://stage48.net/wiki/index.php/Ozono_Momoko)'s alma mater."

* * *

**EDIT:** I made a longer example for fun (53 a's)

> 雨傘が無かったから差さなかったら、朝から体が硬かったが、まあ戦ったら勝ったから、あからさまな差は無かったかな。
>
> A-ma-ga-sa ga na-ka-tta ka-ra sa-sa-na-ka-tta-ra, a-sa ka-ra ka-ra-da ga ka-
> ta-ka-tta ga, ma-a ta-ta-ka-tta-ra ka-tta ka-ra, a-ka-ra-sa-ma-na sa wa na-
> ka-tta ka-na.
>
> "I did not use an umbrella because I did not have one, so my body was stiff
> since this morning, but, well, I still fought and won, so I guess that made
> no obvious difference."

