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Re: OT: Another analytic question

From:caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...>
Date:Wednesday, January 12, 2005, 16:30
In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tristan McLeay <conlang@T...> wrote:

>Well, I'm talking about *my own* perceptions, so what you do is >hardly relevant to me :P I never worked out that hectare and decibel >were composed because their pronunciations are smashed together, >because the prefixes are rare to the point of never occurring >without those units, and because the units are rare to the point of >never occurring without those prefixes.
I guess it is a matter of perception. Those of us who have a background in science know that "deci-" is not rare at all and certainly is attached to other units: decigram, deciliter, and decimeter. Likewise with "hect(o)-": hectogram, hectoliter, and hectometer. "Bel" is an interesting unit. It is not an absolute quantity like a liter or a meter. Rather, it is the logarithm to base 10 of the ratio between two different levels of power, voltage, current or sound intensity. The decibel is ten times that logarithm. The formation of the word is interesting because, in all other uses, "deci-" indicates one-tenth of, while "deca-" is used for ten times. Charlie http://wiki.frath.net/User:Caeruleancentaur