Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[lady_disdain]

Here is something that makes my brain hurt, though it's probably my own fault: when people reference the "second hand" of a clock. Do they mean:

1) The hand that counts off 60 seconds in a minute, which is usually the thinnest hand and often red?
2) The hand that counts off 60 minutes in an hour, because it's the #2 hand, the hour hand being #1 and the red hand being #3? (According to the order in which you would give the time--hours, minutes, seconds--and also a sort of importance measure.)

With all of my qualifiers on #2, I'm guessing people are usually referring to #1. But apparently at some point in time I was taught with, "What number does the first hand say? What number does the second hand say?" and now I'm screwed up for life. Thank goodness for digital. 

This made my head hurt because my brain tends to mess with me when it comes to language.

In Danish the words for 2nd and for 1/60 minute are completely different - as in, have no similarity whatsoever.

So I read Lynn's post (and many of the subsequent posts as well...) as talking about the 2nd hand, and couldn't for the life of me understand why that would be the hand counting off the 1/60ths of a minute.

It wasn't until around Bexx' post that I caught on to it....

This whole discussion is making my head hurt. I don't think I have referred to the individual hands by name since when I was 6 (I think) and learning to tell time. People ask what time it is or how long past the hour (for minutes), not the position of the hands.

[Yvaine]

Here is something that makes my brain hurt, though it's probably my own fault: when people reference the "second hand" of a clock. Do they mean:

1) The hand that counts off 60 seconds in a minute, which is usually the thinnest hand and often red?
2) The hand that counts off 60 minutes in an hour, because it's the #2 hand, the hour hand being #1 and the red hand being #3? (According to the order in which you would give the time--hours, minutes, seconds--and also a sort of importance measure.)

With all of my qualifiers on #2, I'm guessing people are usually referring to #1. But apparently at some point in time I was taught with, "What number does the first hand say? What number does the second hand say?" and now I'm screwed up for life. Thank goodness for digital. 

This made my head hurt because my brain tends to mess with me when it comes to language.

In Danish the words for 2nd and for 1/60 minute are completely different - as in, have no similarity whatsoever.

So I read Lynn's post (and many of the subsequent posts as well...) as talking about the 2nd hand, and couldn't for the life of me understand why that would be the hand counting off the 1/60ths of a minute.

It wasn't until around Bexx' post that I caught on to it....

This whole discussion is making my head hurt. I don't think I have referred to the individual hands by name since when I was 6 (I think) and learning to tell time. People ask what time it is or how long past the hour (for minutes), not the position of the hands.

Hey, the terminology can be useful when the clock/watch is broken.  "I looked up and suddenly the second hand was spinning around madly in circles..."

[magician5]

To add a third option, I was always taught the "big hand" (hour), the "little hand" (minute), and the second hand.  I distinctly remember seeing a clock with a second hand for the first time.  I'm sure they existed, but neither my parents or my schools had them.  I remember sitting in my doctor's office when I was 7 years old, already competent at telling time, and "discovering" the second hand.

All my life, when the "which hand is which" question has come up, someone always seems to say "When Micky's short hand points to three and Micky's long hand points to twelve, it's three o'Clock."

[Iris]

To add a third option, I was always taught the "big hand" (hour), the "little hand" (minute), and the second hand.  I distinctly remember seeing a clock with a second hand for the first time.  I'm sure they existed, but neither my parents or my schools had them.  I remember sitting in my doctor's office when I was 7 years old, already competent at telling time, and "discovering" the second hand.

All my life, when the "which hand is which" question has come up, someone always seems to say "When Micky's short hand points to three and Micky's long hand points to twelve, it's three o'Clock."

Yes, I've always known 'big hand' for minutes and 'little hand' for hours. Distressingly I still occasionally have to teach 12-13 year olds how to tell analogue time and they are fairly universally familiar with that nomenclature for the hands, so it's certainly common around here.

[Yvaine]

I have heard long hand and short hand, now that I think of it. Just not big hand and little hand, for which I'm glad because the short/wide vs. long/narrow issue would have given me fits as a little kid.

[Slartibartfast]

I had to disable the clock on my computer screen when I was a librarian, because so many of my library kids (ages 10-17) refused to try to read the time off the analog clock on the wall and leaned over my desk to read the time on my screen instead.

[starry diadem]

This might make some people's brains hurt - in the UK, we have no comparable word for soda/pop/coke etc. Maybe 'fizzy drinks' or 'soft drinks' though the latter also covers stuff like juice, tea, etc. Soda means soda water, pop means a genre of music, and coke means coca cola exclusively. I do wonder why we don't have a word for that, actually.

Not quite true.  It may be a regional or an age thing, but as a child in the NE of England 40 years ago, I had pop.  It was the generic name for all soft drinks - cherryade, lemonade, coke.  I'll admit I haven't heard it since I moved away, so it may be completely regional.

[Barney girl]

I think you're right. I grew up in the north east of England too and we would say pop. It's not a term I'd hear now, but I don't know if that's because of locality, changes over the years or because I've never liked fizzy drinks, so wouldn't need to use it any way.

[cabbageweevil]

This might make some people's brains hurt - in the UK, we have no comparable word for soda/pop/coke etc. Maybe 'fizzy drinks' or 'soft drinks' though the latter also covers stuff like juice, tea, etc. Soda means soda water, pop means a genre of music, and coke means coca cola exclusively. I do wonder why we don't have a word for that, actually.

Not quite true.  It may be a regional or an age thing, but as a child in the NE of England 40 years ago, I had pop.  It was the generic name for all soft drinks - cherryade, lemonade, coke.  I'll admit I haven't heard it since I moved away, so it may be completely regional.

I live in Birmingham (West Midlands of England). "Pop" is the universal term hereabouts, for fizzy soft drinks.

[laud_shy_girl]

The second hand of a clock is the minutes hand (the long one). 

To tell time on a clock one only needs one hand, the hour hand.  At one o'clock it will be on the one.  As the hour progresses it nudges along towards the two.  You can roughly figure out how much after one it is simply by where the hour hand falls between the one and the two (only 1/4 of the way to two?  Its 1:15ish.  Just over halfway to two?  Its 1:38ish.  etc).  To be more precise in what time it is, many clocks/watches will add a second (as in not the first, but another, second one) hand.  This hand will tell you the actual minutes after the hour the first hand is.

The third hand is the one that shows the actual seconds-as-in-unit-of-time, and is often not included.

You can google image "single hand watch" for examples of what an 'hours only' handed clock/watch look like. Sun dials are also single 'hand' clocks.

Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has thought about two different meanings for the "second hand"! Maybe sunnygirl is right and it's some kind of geographic distinction, but here in the Midwest we are at the intersection of two different preferences. Kind of like how we say both "soda" and "pop." Usually I encounter this confusion when someone says, urgently, "What does the second hand read?!"  A little more pressure than requesting a carbonated beverage...

I'm from the Midwest and have never encountered first-second-third hands, only hour-minute-second. But soda/pop was a source of endless debate at my college, with a sizable minority coming in from the South and arguing that they're all Coke.

This might make some people's brains hurt - in the UK, we have no comparable word for soda/pop/coke etc. Maybe 'fizzy drinks' or 'soft drinks' though the latter also covers stuff like juice, tea, etc. Soda means soda water, pop means a genre of music, and coke means coca cola exclusively. I do wonder why we don't have a word for that, actually.

I'm in the uk and pop as a term for cordials/squash and fizzy drinks is the norm in my region. In fact when I was a child the "Pop Man" would come round in a large open backed truck with creates and creates of different fizzy drinks. A bit like a milk man but with pop. You gave him back your old bottles and he gave you new ones filled with more carbonated heaven.
It's a midlands thing apparently. Family that live more in the north think Pop is a term only used for carbonated drinks. 

I have to go find some dandelion and burdock now.

[Free Range Hippy Chick]

I'm in the uk and pop as a term for cordials/squash and fizzy drinks is the norm in my region. In fact when I was a child the "Pop Man" would come round in a large open backed truck with creates and creates of different fizzy drinks. A bit like a milk man but with pop. You gave him back your old bottles and he gave you new ones filled with more carbonated heaven.
It's a midlands thing apparently. Family that live more in the north think Pop is a term only used for carbonated drinks. 

I have to go find some dandelion and burdock now.

Mr Chick is from the North West and remembers the Lemonade Lorry - and money back on the empty bottles. He will join you for a dandelion and burdock; his sister drank American Cream Soda. He thinks 'pop' is carbonated drinks, the ones that went 'pop!' when you opened the bottle, not squash.

Where I was born we had white lemonade and brown lemonade. As far as I know, the only difference was that brown lemonade had a little caramel colouring in it, but I certainly thought it tasted different and I liked it better. It did mean that once you got to the age of using lemonade as a mixer, you had to specify 'martini and white, please'.

[sunnygirl]

Ah, interesting, thanks. I'd never heard the word "pop" (except to refer to music) until I started reading American forums -- and then it took me ages to figure out it meant a type of drinks. (I thought it meant some kind of pudding or sweets for some reason.) I'm a Londoner and 20s. Britain has some of the most diverse regional dialects and accents. (Anyone read Bill Bryson's books on the subject? They're fascinating.)

[Luci45]

I grew up in southern Illinois drinking 'soda'.

I went to college central Illinois 150 miles away, and there it was always 'pop', both with the northern Illinois kids and the local students.

Our best friends lived in Nebraska and Iowa, and they were not consistant, either.

So, I think when you talk midwest US, you still can't generalize.

I order diet cola whereever I go, and even in Atlanta GA, land of coke = anything, they understood me.

[Jocelyn]

They still deny snoring.  I don't get it.

I resisted having a sleep study done, even though my parents insisted I must have sleep apnea.
They did the study on 2 nights- once for diagnostic, one night to fine-tune the CPAP machine. I've gotten quite used to it, and I do sleep much better. And after I heard that during my original sleep study, my blood oxygenation level dropped to 70% at one point, I was pretty motivated to use it.
I was waking up in a panic, my heart pouinding...well, that's what happens when you're smothering yourself!
If people are single, they say that the best way to tell if you might have apnea is whether you get up to use the bathroom at night. Shallow sleep means that your kidneys keep on making urine at the daytime rate, instead of slowing down at night. Also, if you're waking up for other reasons, it's easy to assume you're waking up because you need to go.

[Jocelyn]

I grew up in southern Illinois drinking 'soda'.

I went to college central Illinois 150 miles away, and there it was always 'pop', both with the northern Illinois kids and the local students.

Our best friends lived in Nebraska and Iowa, and they were not consistant, either.

So, I think when you talk midwest US, you still can't generalize.

I order diet cola whereever I go, and even in Atlanta GA, land of coke = anything, they understood me.

And, as an Ehellion, I have taken to saying 'a refreshing beverage'.