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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:

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

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?

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    まあ、わからなかったんだがなぁ。 ← You can even get whole sentences. :) Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:02

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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 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 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'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."

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    Love the long o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o example. :D Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:00
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    「刀」か、片仮名なら「カ」かな。 Ka-ta-na ka, ka-ta-ka-na na-ra ka ka-na. "This letter is 刀 (katana), or if it's katakana, it's カ (ka), perhaps?"
    – naruto
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:13
  • — Good stuff! 😆👍 Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:41
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    @ubershmekel or not...? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univocalic Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 7:38
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    @naruto わからなかったがたまたまあったから貼ったw (あx17) Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 7:59

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