Three one-hundredths of a second

[spamsink]

(Somewhat prompted by watching the Olympics.)

Why is that silly redundancy there in "three one-hundredths of a second"? Nobody says "two one-thirds of a second", or "four one-tenths of a second"; what so special in 100 as the denominator

Comments

[alexanderr]

> ...As a L2 English speaker...

should it be "As an L2 English speaker" ?

[spamsink]

No, "L2" is pronounced as "non-native", it starts with a consonant. :)

[alexanderr]

my comment was not totally radnom, by the way.

the point was: "an L2" sounds better.
same as "one-hundredth".

also, I think "hundredths" could be too close to "hundreds".
so the redundancy is needed to avoid errors, similar to error correcting codes.
they require some overhead as well

[spamsink]

could be too close to "hundreds"

That's largely irrelevant. 300 is "three hundred", not "three hundreds"; no possibility for an error there.

[5x6]

First, it may be regional. It does not sound unnatural to me, and I asked my daughter whose L1 is English (she lived 27 years out of her 29 in the D.C. area), and for her also "three hundredths" sounds better then "three one-hundredths".

Second, there is a simple reason why "three one-hundredths" nonetheless removes some ambiguity: "three hundredths" per se can be interpreted as "tricentennial", like "three hundredth anniversary of our university. Three tenth or three thousandth can hardly be used with this meaning.

[spamsink]

for her also "three hundredths" sounds better then "three one-hundredths"

Thank you! It could be regional as well, but in a TV broadcast it is likely sportscasterese (an existing word, in fact).

The following "... of a second" removes all ambiguity; the meaning can be uniquely reconstructed even from "three hundred [very short silence] of a second".

[turk_diddler]

Technically it reduces ambiguity as in...

'three hundredths of a second' could potentially mean 1/300 or 0.003, particularly if the 's' in hundredths is dropped or not said clearly.

'three one-hundredths of a second' clearly means 3/100 or 0.03.

In use I don't think many people consider this difference and either way most people would take to mean 0.03. Perhaps somewhere a long the way a commentator with a background in mathematics and penchant for accuracy sent around a memo around about this to all his fellow broadcasters.

[spamsink]

three hundredths of a second' could potentially mean 1/300 or 0.003, particularly if the 's' in hundredths is dropped or not said clearly.

(You might have meant 0.03)

Sorry, I don't get it.

1/300 is "one three-hundredth of a second", and there is no ambiguity unless "one" is lost.

A native speaker (from California/Nevada) whom I asked yesterday said that "three one-hundredths" sounds as if someone not used to using such numbers is trying to add a phony precision by adding "one-"

I'd call it affected, or an example of sportscasterese.

[pseudohistorian]

I suspect this is just an idiosyncratic quirk (and not necessarily a regional one), much like whether people insert the word "and" in a long number or the order in which they write out a date.