In English, the shortest words are four letters long. In some other languages, we use words of only two characters. The longest words are 17-18 letters - for example, "environmentalists" and "unenthusiastically". The longest word in any language so far is in Portuguese - 'caracteristicamente'.

Typically, shorter words are found in cities and more populated areas, while longer words are used in remote areas of the world and oceans (NB oceans are not covered in all languages)