Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 December 31

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December 31

Using the word Mississippi to aid in measuring time

I am not sure how widespread this practice is (?) ... but, I have seen it for many years. If someone is, say, counting to ten seconds ... they will say: one, Mississippi; two, Mississippi; three, Mississippi; ... and so forth. I always assumed that the word Mississippi takes (naturally) a full second to pronounce. And, as such, it helps to "keep time". Is there some terminology for this? And is there any Wikipedia article for this? I looked in all of the obvious places, but found nothing. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:40, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Here's what Quora has to say about it.[1] <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 05:22, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

In poetic or prosodic (metrical) terminology, Mississippi has two full trochaic feet... AnonMoos (talk) 07:32, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

In the UK, the usual estimation method is to count "elephants", although having one less syllable than "Mississippi", it needs to be spoken a bit more slowly.

However, I did find a 1966 British physics textbook which recommended; "Seconds of time may be counted by saying 'Mississippi 1, Mississippi 2', etc." each syllable being clearly said at normal speed. Test this by counting up to 'Mississippi 10' while watching a clock". Physics: Questions Book - Volume 1, Part 2 (p. 36), Nuffield Foundation, Science Teaching Project. 1966

Alansplodge (talk) 12:17, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

One needs to say the words one, --; two, --; three --; ...  Each Mississippi on its own takes less than a second (in typical normal speech). Saying the numerals contributes roughly a quarter of the elapsed time. The method breaks down by the time you reach twenty-seven thousand five hundred forty-four Mississippi, twenty-seven thousand five hundred forty-five Mississippi, ...  --Lambiam 13:34, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

It was always "One banana two banana" for us. I wonder if that's why swing rhythms always came easy to me? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 16:36, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

That might work in dialects where 4 syllables a second is the average speed. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:54, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

It's a chant. I don't sing the way I speak, and I don't chant the way I speak either.--jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 17:02, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Sagittarian_Milky_Way -- English is well-known among linguists to be a "stress-timed language" (as opposed to "syllable-timed languages" such as Spanish), so syllables per second has only limited meaningfullness for English. The Wikipedia article is Isochrony (probably not a well-known term among linguists). AnonMoos (talk) 17:20, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Very interesting, thanks. Never really noticed English timing before though I'd noticed that French cadence seemed different and apparently that's what syllable timing sounds like. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:35, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

French is broadly classified as syllable-timed (except for syllables with a schwa vowel), but it doesn't quite have the "machine-gun" cadence of Spanish... AnonMoos (talk) 19:22, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The speed makes the cadence less prominent but you're right, fast Spanish does sound like machine gun bursts. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Found this relevant page in Wiktionary: Appendix:Words used as placeholders to count seconds. Deor (talk) 17:03, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

(ec) We used to count seconds as "one thousand and one, one thousand and two, etc". The word "Mississippi" on its own always sounds in my head like it does in the Pussycat song, which makes it a little too long to count seconds. DuncanHill (talk) 17:04, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

And from what I've heard, "Mississippi" doesn't generally have four syllables as spoken by people from Mississippi. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 18:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The first time I learned this method, it was chimpanzees. "One chimpanzee, two chimpanzees, ..., seven panzees, eight chimpanzees", allowing 4 syllables per ssecond. --174.95.161.129 (talk) 04:33, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Fittingly testicle and bonobo are also 3 syllables. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 05:03, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

In German, we count "21, 22, 23" (Einundzwanzig, Zweiundzwanzig, Dreiundzwanzig,...) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:33, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

i.e. words of four syllables. --Morinox (talk) 09:37, 2 January 2021 (UTC)