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One Mississippi ... Two Mississippi

 


When I was a kid, grownups would sometimes advise me that to make my counting approximate the passage of seconds, it would help to say "one Mississippi, two Mississippi...." 

Other times, though, they would say that the right phrasing was "one one-thousand, two one-thousand ...."

Can both be valid?  Mississippi has four distinct beats.  "One-thousands" only has three.  Wouldn't the latter system yield shorter seconds than the former? 

A little experimentation since has found that I do tend to pronounce the four syllables of "Mississippi" roughly as rapidly that the three of "one thousand". Those esses, eh?  One tends to slide right through them.  One the other hand, after the word "one" I reach a full stop then press forward with the "the" sounds.  I think we may say roughly that the space in between the two words acts as a beat, so both expressions are four beats. 

One childhood quandary at last resolved at 67 years of age. Whew. 

PS, Yes, my choice of an illustration is unusually arbitrary today. Enjoy the palindromedary. 

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  1. Paul D. Van PeltOctober 26, 2025 at 9:16 AM

    0ne-potato, two-potato, three-potato--- five-potato, six-potato, seven-potato---...Yes, the cadence breaks there with seven, yet the interval change is not easily measurable. I only recall hearing the one-Mississippi theme twice in my lifetime. The second time was today. Some of these artifacts are, I think, regional colloquialisms. Did you ever hear someone say: he took off like a scalded dog? That one is distinctly Appalachia, "far as I know".

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