Highlights from the Fray:
Has anybody seen the movie Strange Days? It starred Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis. It was released in 1995 and it was about many things that were happening right before the year 2000. Throughout the movie they refered to the year 2000 as being "Y2K." Maybe this movie has something to do with this term becoming so popular.
--Defiance
(To reply, click here.)
A couple of years ago, when I was doing my year 2000 testing on a Unix box, I postdated the machine and kept "touching" files until one came up with an incorrect date. I used the prefix "y2k" as part of the name, along with the dates that I had tried. Why "y2k?" Because I needed a short abbreviation to add to the date I was trying, as the system could accomodate only 14 characters in the filename (at that time).
Now, I had not read "y2k" from any other source. I may not have been the first of course, but certainly I was not the only one to come up with it. There are, I'm positive, thousands of other "testers" who used the same abbreviation, and that is probably why this particular acronym stuck.
--Doug
(To reply, click here.)
Taking the term "Year 2000" and shortening to the simple "Y2K" is exactly the sort of thinking that got us into this mess. (1965 into '65)
--Craig
(To reply, click here.)
I had just returned home from work one day about 7 years ago to find my wife, Waye, at our computer. She had theorized that there was going to be a problem with the way dates were handled by the computer.
I said, "Waye Toukay, I believe you have something." I shortened the expression to Y2K, and it has been used ever since. I would appreciate it if everyone who has borrowed the phrase over the years sends me $1.00 cash for each time it was used.
In care of:
Clyde Johnson
8535 Grand Oaks Cove
Arlington, TN 38002
--Robert Toukay
(To reply, click here.)
What a B.S. article. Everyone knows that Al Gore termed the phrase Y2K.
--David Jones
(To reply, click here.)
"In fact, Masters said, she could think of only one other word that featured such an exquisitely pleasing articulatory progression in the mouth: 'Monica.'"
Let's not forget Nabokov's exquisite progression in the other direction:
"Tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth: Lo. Li. Ta."
--Andrew Solovay
(To reply, click here.)
(12/15)
"2" is not uvular. It is dental/alveolar/alveo-palatal depending on how you pronounce your [t] and if you are including the vowel [u]. [k] is indeed velar. Uvular would come even further back in the mouth than "K".
I think if you try pronouncing Y2K with the "2" as uvular, you will find it has great difficulty rolling out of the mouth.
--MrCardBoard
(To reply, click here.)
I want to know if the fix for the Y2K bug will run into problems in 8000 years, when another digit is added to our dating system. If the Y2K solution is simply to replace the 2 digit "00" with a 4 digit "2000," then the year after "9999" will pose a problem again. Is anyone addressing this problem???!!!???!?!?!?!?
--Chazzerai Pischler
(To reply, click here.)
Often ignored regarding the popularity of the term "Y2K" is many tech-savvy folks' favorite television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which has been abbreviated as MST3K for well over seven years. No surprise that another K-term would catch on.
--Neil Shah
(To reply, click here.)
As for "K" as opposed to "M"--what do geeks call roughly 1,000 bytes? That's right, because "M" stands for roughly 1,000,000 bytes.
--William Li
(To reply, click here.)
It was actually I who founded the phrase "Y2K."
I was directing an action sequence for a Fox television show some years ago (90210--the wife of Luke Perry's character gets gunned down in a car). After we closed the gate I chatted with Luke, whom I knew from our high school days together back in Fredericktown, Ohio. Luke told me that a mutual friend had since gotten married to Kay ******, who was the class "sleaze," if you know what I mean. Anyway, I exclaimed, "My God! Why to Kay?"
Luke shook his head and responded, "Yeah, why to Kay..." A PA happened to overhear this conversation, and supposedly later that day this PA was asked by a reporter for Tiger Beat, or People, or something like that, what Luke and I had been discussing when this reporter had seen us talking. The PA couldn't remember everything she had heard, and replied, "I don't remember ... I heard something like, Why to Kay!!??" The reporter for this magazine misinterpreted the "why to Kay?" as letters and numerals. This reporter wrote in her article that Luke and I had been overheard discussing "Y2K."
Viola! When printed, this article immortalized my phrase: "Why to Kay," now better known as Y2K.
--Bill Richards
(To reply, click here.)
Consider the satisfying movements involved in the production of the word Bethlehem--you know, the Holy City. Now, here is a word which fails to follow articulatory progression (labial-alveolar-labial [m]), yet it flows out of our mouth like butter--even though it ends in a "soft m"- whatever that is. The last time I checked, nasals were highly sonorous sounds---so much so that they often substitute for vowels as syllabic nuclei in English words such as rhythm and fathom. There is nothing "soft" about [m].
The author is on the right track when she speaks of syllable structure and poetics: Notice that Bethlehem follows the same pattern of [closed syllable - open syllable - closed syllable]. Perhaps this helps a bit, but notice that her own supporting example: Monica, while adhering to "articulatory progression" (labial - alveolar - velar), is comprised solely of open (short) syllables. So much for the open/closed (short/long) syllable theory. (By the way, there are many other words of the Monica type [labial - alveolar - velar]--Vatican immediately comes to mind. Notice that Vatican is just as "exquisitely pleasing" as Monica or Y2K, even though the sequence of syllable types is distinct in each toke. Like I said, so much for the "type of syllable" theory.)
No, what is truly pleasing about these forms has to do with prosody, that is, the assignment of stress. As you know, airflow pressure through the articulatory tract is highest at the beggining of an utterance, and weakest at the end. This is why we tend to trail of (volume wise, pitch wise, etc.) at the end of an utterance. This is easily illustrated by comparing the "oral delight" of VAtican with the "oral pain" of vaseLINE, with stress (air flow) required at the end of the utterance. In fact, if words like MOnica are so easy articulatorily, we would expect our language to be filled with these "easy" words, to make our lives as communicators a bit easier (conserve a few calories).
Finally then, what needs to be explained is why Y2K prefers stress on the final syllable as opposed to the first. I would appeal to the frequency of the prosodic pattern (secondary stress - no stress - primary stress), which is highly common in trisyllabic words and phrases in English. For example, consider where you would place the primary and secondary stresses on phrases such as rainy day, better seats, smaller house, etc. This is the major factor explaining the stress pattern of Y2K, which represents three words--an analogy drawn with English prosody.
A final, but sort of flimsy argument to explain the "unusual" placement of stress on the final syllable in Y2K is that we would pronounce the words, year two THOUsand with the identical stress pattern.
--A Linguist's View
(To reply, click here.)
Since the person doing research only looked at postings on the Internet, it really does not go back far enough. Most people think that the Y2K problem has only been recently addressed, but this is not the case. Mortgage companies had to fix this problem in their code as far back as 1971 because of 30-year mortgages. So who knows what terms were used back then.
--Tom
(To reply, click here.)
In computer speak "K" and "k" mean two different things. K stands for 1024, as in KB (kilobyte), and k stands for 100, as in km (kilometer). Therefore the abbreviation "Y2K" is not quite correct. It should be "y2k" or "Y2k."
--Grzegorz Pawelczak
(To reply, click here.)
Y2k is cute and effective, but wrong! In computerese, 1K = 1024 (2 to the 10th power).
2K = 2048. But we don't have a problem with the year 2048. The problem is in year 2000.
Therefore:
2000 divided by 1024 = 1.953125.
The correct expression should be: Y1.953125.
But I don't think it will catch on.
--grouell
(To reply, click here.)
I have changed all my 'Y's to 'K's on my year 2000 calendar. Now it reads Sundak, Mondak, Tuesdak, ...Januark, Februark, Mak, ... I don't understand all this but I'm ready and y to k compliant...
--lizg
(To reply, click here.)
(12/16)
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Highlights from the Fray:
Has anybody seen the movie Strange Days? It starred Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis. It was released in 1995 and it was about many things that were happening right before the year 2000. Throughout the movie they refered to the year 2000 as being "Y2K." Maybe this movie has something to do with this term becoming so popular.
--Defiance
(To reply, click here.)
A couple of years ago, when I was doing my year 2000 testing on a Unix box, I postdated the machine and kept "touching" files until one came up with an incorrect date. I used the prefix "y2k" as part of the name, along with the dates that I had tried. Why "y2k?" Because I needed a short abbreviation to add to the date I was trying, as the system could accomodate only 14 characters in the filename (at that time).
Now, I had not read "y2k" from any other source. I may not have been the first of course, but certainly I was not the only one to come up with it. There are, I'm positive, thousands of other "testers" who used the same abbreviation, and that is probably why this particular acronym stuck.
--Doug
(To reply, click here.)
Taking the term "Year 2000" and shortening to the simple "Y2K" is exactly the sort of thinking that got us into this mess. (1965 into '65)
--Craig
(To reply, click here.)
I had just returned home from work one day about 7 years ago to find my wife, Waye, at our computer. She had theorized that there was going to be a problem with the way dates were handled by the computer.
I said, "Waye Toukay, I believe you have something." I shortened the expression to Y2K, and it has been used ever since. I would appreciate it if everyone who has borrowed the phrase over the years sends me $1.00 cash for each time it was used.
In care of:
Clyde Johnson
8535 Grand Oaks Cove
Arlington, TN 38002
--Robert Toukay
(To reply, click here.)
What a B.S. article. Everyone knows that Al Gore termed the phrase Y2K.
--David Jones
(To reply, click here.)
"In fact, Masters said, she could think of only one other word that featured such an exquisitely pleasing articulatory progression in the mouth: 'Monica.'"
Let's not forget Nabokov's exquisite progression in the other direction:
"Tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth: Lo. Li. Ta."
--Andrew Solovay
(To reply, click here.)
(12/15)
"2" is not uvular. It is dental/alveolar/alveo-palatal depending on how you pronounce your [t] and if you are including the vowel [u]. [k] is indeed velar. Uvular would come even further back in the mouth than "K".
I think if you try pronouncing Y2K with the "2" as uvular, you will find it has great difficulty rolling out of the mouth.
--MrCardBoard
(To reply, click here.)
I want to know if the fix for the Y2K bug will run into problems in 8000 years, when another digit is added to our dating system. If the Y2K solution is simply to replace the 2 digit "00" with a 4 digit "2000," then the year after "9999" will pose a problem again. Is anyone addressing this problem???!!!???!?!?!?!?
--Chazzerai Pischler
(To reply, click here.)
Often ignored regarding the popularity of the term "Y2K" is many tech-savvy folks' favorite television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which has been abbreviated as MST3K for well over seven years. No surprise that another K-term would catch on.
--Neil Shah
(To reply, click here.)
As for "K" as opposed to "M"--what do geeks call roughly 1,000 bytes? That's right, because "M" stands for roughly 1,000,000 bytes.
--William Li
(To reply, click here.)
It was actually I who founded the phrase "Y2K."
I was directing an action sequence for a Fox television show some years ago (90210--the wife of Luke Perry's character gets gunned down in a car). After we closed the gate I chatted with Luke, whom I knew from our high school days together back in Fredericktown, Ohio. Luke told me that a mutual friend had since gotten married to Kay ******, who was the class "sleaze," if you know what I mean. Anyway, I exclaimed, "My God! Why to Kay?"
Luke shook his head and responded, "Yeah, why to Kay..." A PA happened to overhear this conversation, and supposedly later that day this PA was asked by a reporter for Tiger Beat, or People, or something like that, what Luke and I had been discussing when this reporter had seen us talking. The PA couldn't remember everything she had heard, and replied, "I don't remember ... I heard something like, Why to Kay!!??" The reporter for this magazine misinterpreted the "why to Kay?" as letters and numerals. This reporter wrote in her article that Luke and I had been overheard discussing "Y2K."
Viola! When printed, this article immortalized my phrase: "Why to Kay," now better known as Y2K.
--Bill Richards
(To reply, click here.)
Consider the satisfying movements involved in the production of the word Bethlehem--you know, the Holy City. Now, here is a word which fails to follow articulatory progression (labial-alveolar-labial [m]), yet it flows out of our mouth like butter--even though it ends in a "soft m"- whatever that is. The last time I checked, nasals were highly sonorous sounds---so much so that they often substitute for vowels as syllabic nuclei in English words such as rhythm and fathom. There is nothing "soft" about [m].
The author is on the right track when she speaks of syllable structure and poetics: Notice that Bethlehem follows the same pattern of [closed syllable - open syllable - closed syllable]. Perhaps this helps a bit, but notice that her own supporting example: Monica, while adhering to "articulatory progression" (labial - alveolar - velar), is comprised solely of open (short) syllables. So much for the open/closed (short/long) syllable theory. (By the way, there are many other words of the Monica type [labial - alveolar - velar]--Vatican immediately comes to mind. Notice that Vatican is just as "exquisitely pleasing" as Monica or Y2K, even though the sequence of syllable types is distinct in each toke. Like I said, so much for the "type of syllable" theory.)
No, what is truly pleasing about these forms has to do with prosody, that is, the assignment of stress. As you know, airflow pressure through the articulatory tract is highest at the beggining of an utterance, and weakest at the end. This is why we tend to trail of (volume wise, pitch wise, etc.) at the end of an utterance. This is easily illustrated by comparing the "oral delight" of VAtican with the "oral pain" of vaseLINE, with stress (air flow) required at the end of the utterance. In fact, if words like MOnica are so easy articulatorily, we would expect our language to be filled with these "easy" words, to make our lives as communicators a bit easier (conserve a few calories).
Finally then, what needs to be explained is why Y2K prefers stress on the final syllable as opposed to the first. I would appeal to the frequency of the prosodic pattern (secondary stress - no stress - primary stress), which is highly common in trisyllabic words and phrases in English. For example, consider where you would place the primary and secondary stresses on phrases such as rainy day, better seats, smaller house, etc. This is the major factor explaining the stress pattern of Y2K, which represents three words--an analogy drawn with English prosody.
A final, but sort of flimsy argument to explain the "unusual" placement of stress on the final syllable in Y2K is that we would pronounce the words, year two THOUsand with the identical stress pattern.
--A Linguist's View
(To reply, click here.)
Since the person doing research only looked at postings on the Internet, it really does not go back far enough. Most people think that the Y2K problem has only been recently addressed, but this is not the case. Mortgage companies had to fix this problem in their code as far back as 1971 because of 30-year mortgages. So who knows what terms were used back then.
--Tom
(To reply, click here.)
In computer speak "K" and "k" mean two different things. K stands for 1024, as in KB (kilobyte), and k stands for 100, as in km (kilometer). Therefore the abbreviation "Y2K" is not quite correct. It should be "y2k" or "Y2k."
--Grzegorz Pawelczak
(To reply, click here.)
Y2k is cute and effective, but wrong! In computerese, 1K = 1024 (2 to the 10th power).
2K = 2048. But we don't have a problem with the year 2048. The problem is in year 2000.
Therefore:
2000 divided by 1024 = 1.953125.
The correct expression should be: Y1.953125.
But I don't think it will catch on.
--grouell
(To reply, click here.)
I have changed all my 'Y's to 'K's on my year 2000 calendar. Now it reads Sundak, Mondak, Tuesdak, ...Januark, Februark, Mak, ... I don't understand all this but I'm ready and y to k compliant...
--lizg
(To reply, click here.)
(12/16)