one Woolloomooloo, two Woolloomooloo, …
kidding
one electronic, two electronic, etc
That’s OK. That’s how the Mississippians say it too.
“Mil-ciento-uno, mil-ciento-dos, mil-ciento-tres” and so forth; however it´s not usual; most people here just count from 1 and times it by an educated guess.
I´ve only used the timing trick a few times when I wanted to get the timing for an animation and I didn´t have a timer at hand.
My usual method is simple, I just imagine the tickling of a clock, Tic----Toc----Tic----Toc----… In general I have a good perception of time flow, for example I´d set up the microwave to heat something, go away to do something and return just in time to open the door.
This is interesting. Antechinus, and you Canadians, are you serious? And Picadilly in England? That’s very cool. Steamboats and electronics. Interesting about zweiundzwanzig, too. I like this thread.
When I was a Ragu-Follower, we were taught to count either Mississippis or Locomotives, depending on personal preference. This was in the Department of Defense school district at Yokota Air Base, Japan, IIRC. (Yokota East Elementary School, I think).
Here my grandmother’s favourite was one white elephant, two white elephants…
How fascinating. When I was growing up, it was “one-cat-and-dog, two-cat-and-dog”.
Wales must have had some sort of influence on my hometown in New Jersey because growing up we youngsters would say, “1-Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch 2-Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch 3-Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch…” I remember my childhood fondly, though, ironically, we were perpetually late for everything.
I was going to post exactly that. I got really good at “one Mississippi” for Nerf football games in backyards and courtyards. I suspect I was under one second, what with the slurring.
I use either ‘white elephant’ or ‘Mississippi’.
I am from the U.K. and have never heard of ‘Picadilly’ being used but I am from the north of England so perhaps it is a regional thing.
These methods for counting always seem flawed to me as when you get to larger numbers speaking the numbers in your head takes longer so your separating word should become shorter to compensate.
By way of a quick experiment I just timed myself counting ‘zero Mississippi one Mississippi two Mississippi…’ up to ten and it took about 9 seconds each time. I then timed myself counting ‘twenty Mississippi twenty-one Mississippi twenty-two Mississippi…’ up to thirty and it took around 11 seconds each time. So it seems to me that Mississippi gives a happy medium but a more accurate system would have different stalling words that are introduced as you reach higher numbers, using a single word of phrase throughout is going to give you pretty big errors when you get up into the hundreds and thousands.
I’ve never heard before now of anyone counting “Zero Mississippi.”
Well it makes sense to me to start at zero, if you were to begin counting and you started at one you would always be a second ahead, for example if you start a stopwatch and immediately start counting ‘one Mississippi two Mississippi…’ then at the point you say two the clock will say one, at the point you say three the clock will say two and so on.
Doesn’t that make more sense or am I missing something fundamental in counting I haven’t realised before?
In Spain we either count figures or use a watch. You know, those machines that were invented for counting time? Those.
I use ‘ABC one’, ‘ABC two’ and so on.
It doesn’t work so well when the numbers have more syllables!
Oh, and it’s two c’s in Piccadilly.
In Soviet Russia, seconds count you!
Mostly it was “one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three…” etc, although I have a soft spot for “one little monkey, two little monkeys, three little monkeys…”
In Norway it’s usually “ett tusen og en, ett tusen og to, ett tusen og tre…”, which is to say one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three… in fact there was a public safety capaign something between 12 and 15 years ago to try to get drivers to leave enough empty space between their car and the car ahead, which inclosed distributing bumper stickers that read 1001, 1002, 1003 - i.e., count three seconds to check the spacing.
In the U.K. we are taught to use the phrase “only a fool breaks the two second rule” to judge how close we should be to the car infront, the phrase is supposed to take two seconds to say.
When we played football in the street we had to count five “Alligators” before we could rush the quarterback.
Alligators were only used in football though. All other timing conventions used the, apparently, popular “one onethousand, two onethousand”.
Grew up in the East Bay section of the SF Bay Area.
Same here. Alabama and Tennessee. I was adult (maybe it was in Raising Arizona) before hearing about the Mississippi thing, which, when I think of it, is quite odd.
Depends. Do you figure you reach ten seconds at the first ‘t’ sound of ‘ten’ or only after completely finishing ‘ten Mississippi’?