In article <slrng2qi7s.s1o.tim@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Tim Little <tim@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>On 2008-05-16, Mike Van Pelt <mvp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> ... the first "Back to the Future" movie, where it seems
>> 1.2 Jiggawatt <sic>
>
>There is no "<sic>". That spelling was never used in the
>movie, and the pronunciation they used of "gigawatt" was
>officially correct in the US.
Egad. When I saw the long chain of replies off my article,
I thought sure the firestorm had been touched off by my
crack about such an energy source making Amory Lovins'
head explode.
But because I made fun of Dr. J. Emmett Brown's pronunciation?
Yeah, I know the "jigawatt" pronunciation is officially
correct, but it is very rarely used. In fact, the "Back to
the Future" movie is the first time I had ever heard that
pronunciation used, and I was surprised to find out that it
was a correct alternate pronunciation.
That fact, that I'd never encountered that pronunciation
in the course of getting a dual Chemistry/Physics major
in college back in the 70s, establishes for me that the
"soft j" pronunciation has been pretty rare in actual use by
people in the U.S. who use those prefixes for a long time.
--
Mike Van Pelt | Wikipedia. The roulette wheel of knowledge.
mvp at calweb.com | --Blair P. Houghton
KE6BVH
|
