Because animals don’t understand English. Duh!
It doesn’t even rise to that level. (In fact, if you Google you can find several people claiming that they personally know people with these names. Believe it if you will.)
First the phrase is relatively recent, probably from the 1850s, as a counting rhyme, something that’s not quite the same thing as words for actual numbers. It’s not quite the same as even the numerous examples of number replacement kids counting slang mentioned above. There’s no possibility that it’s an actual relic of a pre-Anglo Saxon British language. It’s not folk etymology. In the words of Wolfgang Pauli, it’s not even wrong.
My grandfather told the tale of a neighborhood ne’er-do-well, when he was a child, who had trained his horse to go at “whoa”, and stop at “giddyup”. He loaded up his horse-cart with groceries at the general store, and as he was getting out his wallet, he said “Whoa, fella” to steady the horse, and then had to run after him yelling “Whoa, whoa”, and unfortunately never got the chance to pay.
:dubious:
OK, I dug up the family memoirs. Turns out it wasn’t groceries, but drinks, that he ran out on. In Grampap’s own words:
You’ve obviously never done much training of horses. They are quite capable of telling the difference between a command directed at them and casual conversation between occupants of the vehicle.
And a good driver also uses a ‘command voice’, which is clearly different from the tones used in casual conversation. Heck, an experienced draft horse team can tell the difference between the driver cursing at the loading dock workers and cursing at them!
It’s been theorized that the ship’s computer on Star Trek functions the same way.
I don’t think so. From what I recall of Star Trek (the original), any command to the computer was always preceded by an opening salutation to get the computers’ attention. Usually “computer…”.
That’s a fairly common technique in voice recognition systems, even today. Many cell phones, for example, can be programmed to dial a specific number on voice commands.
So what’s “yeehaw!”?
That looks suspiciously like the word for “three” dropped out, “cockerum, quitherum, shitherum, shatherum,” moved from meaning “4, 5, 6, 7,” to “3, 4, 5, 6,” and so they had to add another number around “8.” Freaky. Presumably whoever used this form never used the component words as numbers outside the phrase.
See http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba46/ba46int.html
Beats me, the mules I used had already been trained so I was stuck using the terms. When I asked I was told “Dumbass, that’s whut them mules know”!
Also, this minimizes the danger of anyone guessing the commands or accidentally using one of the commands.
I’ve read that illiterate farmers-turned-soldiers during the Civil War had hay put in one shoe and straw in the other, and would be trained to march in formation by reference to “hay foot” and “straw foot,” since they didn’t necessarily know right from left.
Actually on many ferry boats the direction of travel does change and so does port and starboard.
Of course they have two bridges and two sets of navigation lights.
I once knew a woman who had trained her dog to “Do Nixon” on command…
I heard a story about a Navy Commander who had the frequent habit of solemnly taking out a small silver case, opening it, looking into it then replacing it back in his pocket. Many wondered what was in the box. Upon his retirement the secret was revealed. It held a scrap of paper on which was written: port left, starboard right.
Easier to remember: “port” and “left” both have four letters.
I find all of these to be inexplicably charming.
IIRC, in kayaking, port is always taken as the left side relative to the direction (primary current) of the river.
This is what I was taught. Tradition and vowel sounds.
Also, “There’s no red port wine left.”, which also gives you the correct light colors for your ship.