student asking question

Is it possible to count "Mississippi"? and why are these nouns spoken in singular form?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

This requires a bit of knowledge about American culture. Pronouncing the word "Mississippi" takes up roughly one second of time. Thus, in America, many people count "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi" and so on to be as close as possible to clock-time. Of course, it depends on how fast one is speaking, but it is more accurate to count this way than to count numbers slowly (one, two, three, etc.). Ex: A: Count to ten! B: One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi...

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