I think it's three. E.g., あ-た-ら: 新

Would there be a kanji representing four or more syllables?

糎 センチメートル (found on Wikipedia).

Ones that are actually used:

承る うけたまわる
志 こころざし
慮る おもんぱかる

So six syllables. Wow.

I was thinking this morning that reading kanji out loud feels more "natural" when each kanji represents a single syllable (like in Chinese).

I realized that (to me anyway) it feels a bit odd when reading out loud a multi-syllable word represented graphically by a single kanji, I'm not sure why.

If you don't want to deal with the annoying Japanese writing system, you'll have to pick another language.

john555 Wrote:So six syllables. Wow.

I was thinking this morning that reading kanji out loud feels more "natural" when each kanji represents a single syllable (like in Chinese).

I don't know about modern Chinese, but many chinese-derived ON readings are two syllables. The chinese-derived readings are pretty much limited to one or two syllables (or more accurately 'mora'), but kun readings can be arbitrarily long as a single kanji could be chosen to represent any given Yamato (ie., originally Japanese) word. Or perhaps even a loan word as in the centimeter example above.

.

That's 3 by the OP's criterion (not sure how he gets 6 and not 7 or 5 from センチメートル, though).

At the other extreme, I think there's at least one word with more than one kanji per mora, but the closest I can recall is 秋刀魚 さんま.

The Koujien has a word 豆油 pronounced ご, but I've never seen or heard of that word outside of the dictionary. I just know it because when I start typing a word into my electronic dictionary that starts with ご, it shows up.

There's 海鷂魚 「えい」!

The funniest reading I've come across:
小保方晴子 /STAPさま/

百舌鳥 もず bull-headed shrike
香具師 やし charlatan
七五三縄 しめなわ Shinto rope
五十日の祝 いかのいわい newborn's 50th day celebration
骨皮筋右衛門 ほねかわすじえもん reduced to skin and bones

I suppose 風邪 also qualifies.

Readings of surnames offer great examples of both extremes:

五月七日　つゆり
九十九院／四十四院　つるし
正月一日　あお
一　にのまえ [get it? ]
九　いちじく [GET IT!? ]

Also, 与謝野晶子's real given name was 志よう (しょう). Apparently that kanji represents less than a mora.

I googled japanese and found this in one of the posts
http://blog.livedoor.jp/vipreaction/arch...20663.html

門人
「ものかげからきゅうにとびだしてひ とをおどろかせるときにはっするこえ」

There's also this
http://www.eris.ais.ne.jp/~himitu/html/ach/word.html#
Needlessly I've never come across the word above or the ones in the links

More obscure kanji
http://www17.plala.or.jp/u-ho/zatugaku2.html

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:I googled japanese and found this in one of the posts
http://blog.livedoor.jp/vipreaction/arch...20663.html

門人
「ものかげからきゅうにとびだしてひ とをおどろかせるときにはっするこえ」

This was brought up in a previous post -- this is not a reading of the kanji. The 大漢和辞典 gives meanings of kanji, some of which are used as readings and some of which aren't. This is a phrase that defines the kanji --　物陰からきゅうに飛び出して人を驚かせる時にはっする声.

The same is true of all the other long readings typically given; they're definitions or meanings, not readings.

However, there are some genuine readings from older kanbun texts that are long -- I can't come up with any over 5 offhand, but I've seen 事（つかうまつ）る and 宇（あめのした）, for instance.