"Lat/Long?" - why not "Lat/Lon?"

A small issue, to be sure. But I’m puzzled that the common abbreviation for longitude should be “long”. Following the elegant 3-letter example of “lat”, surely “lon” is preferable: same number of letters, and the same invocation of the correct sound of the first syllable. “Long” seems decidedly awkward - too many letters, wrong sound - yet it’s much more common (though certainly not universal).

Anyone know why? I’ve heard it speculated that “long” is used because it involves chopping off the same letters as with “lat” - but surely what remains is more important than what’s discarded.

You think ‘long’ seems awkward, and ‘lon’ doesnt? I disagree. I think that more naturally rolls off the tongue and is understood more intuitively.

the “ng” in Longitude is a phoneme, so we can’t split the “n” from the “g” without it becoming in our minds a separate soundmeaning.

Or, more precisely, the “n” only takes the “ŋ” form (the part where you’re sort of swallowing your tongue right before the “g” in an “ng” sound) when it’s before a “g”, so if we chopped the “g” off we wouldn’t want to say “loŋ”, but rather “lon”, because we very rarely end a word with the pure “ŋ” sound rather than the “ŋg” (or of course, informally, “n”.)

Which is not to say there aren’t some abbreviations that do alter the sound of the abbreviated word, it’s just an explanation for why “long” seems more natural (to myself, at least.)

Some people, me, and programs do use Lat/Lon. I’ve also just looked through some of our programs and notes and the entire office uses Lat/Lon. This is the gonvernment so what do they know? :wink:

When I see the abbreviation “long.” it seems as if it should sound like the 4-letter word “long” - rhymes with gong, tong, etc. This does not match the sound at the beginning of the word “longitude”. Are you saying it sounds like “longe” to you, and therefore does match?

Whereas when I see “lon.” it seems as if it rhymes with con, don, non, etc. This matches the sound I hear at the beginning of “longitude”.

So do the folks I work with. Lat/Long is hardly universal.

I had to look this up on Merriam-Webster to find out what pronunciation prevents it from sounding like ‘long’.

You are correct about that. Dictionaries split the syllables between the “n” and the “g.”

Here I think you’re off base. There’s a nice symmetry, logic, and consistency in using abbreviations that retain all of the “different” part of the full words. Not that that’s the only way to do it - if it were important to, say, keep everything at 3 letters, “lat” and “lon” would be the best choice. But I would venture that the brain more readily processes the elimination of “-itude” across the board than it would the combination of “-itude” and “-gitude,” making “lat” and “long” more readily recognizable.

I pronounce it “lon-ji-tude” /lanʤItud/, which most definitely does not have an ŋ anywhere in it.

We do? My understanding is that very few people actually pronounce a voiced velar consonant /g/ after the velar nasal /ŋ/ in words like “wrong”, “sing”, etc. Cite.

I’d pronounce it /long-gi-tyuud/. The g nasalises the preceding n.

Well, sort of, and I almost put it in my post.

I pronounce the “Long” in “Longitude” as “Loŋj” (sorry, can’t find a copy-able IPA symbol for the “backwards o” or the “dz” sound, but it has the same “o” as “caught”.) I assume you mean you are pronouncing yours with the same “o” sound as in “cot”. Lahn-dzitude would just sound weird to me (assuming the other person spoke an American dialect.)

Yeah, I meant the “cot”/“bother” vowel, though I also wasn’t being particularly picky about distinguishing between that and the “spa”/“father” vowel.

You’re saying your pronunciation is /lɔŋʤItud/ (with /ɔ/ being the vowel of “caught”)? Interesting.

And while I’m all IPA happy, I guess Giles’s is /laŋ.gI.tjud/.

What messed me up when I was doing GIS programming is it is generally Lat/lon, but it is x,y for most customer systems. I finally put a sticky note on my monitor
“Lat is Y (N/S), LON is X (E/W)”

Brian

Well, there’s ignorance for you. Apparently I have been pronouncing “longitude” wrong all these years. I always said “long-i-tude”, with the first syllable like “long” and no “j” sound. Oops.

I work with maps in my profession, and we use lat/lon most of the time.

Ed

Not wrong, just differently. Cambridge gives three pronunciations.

Well that’s a relief. I looked at a couple of online dictionaries and they only gave the “lonjitude” pronunciation. I feel slightly less silly now.