Grammar rules apart, if second has to answer a unit of 1 second, why the
hell send such message to 5? Why not Time second for example?

Le jeu. 11 mars 2021 à 02:25, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> a écrit :

> On Tue, Mar 09, 2021 at 01:47:49PM +0000, Thiede, Christoph wrote:
> > > "I want a two second delay" is perfectly valid :D
> >
> > Maybe a native English speaker can correct me but afaik, in the grammar
> > dependency tree of "two-second delay", "two-second" is not an independet
> > noun but a pre-modifying phrase only. Shall we really start to support
> > even more different types of words in an object-oriented language like
> > Smalltalk? Imho, substantives and verbs are already enough. :-)
> >
>
> I am a native Engish speaker with a poor understanding of grammar, so
> that makes me a good person to attempt an answer ;-)
>
> The use of singular "second" or plural "seconds" may depend on the
> context of the expression, but in any case if I were to hear someone
> say "five second" I would understand it to refer to five seconds, not
> one second. If I were to try to enforce correct English (is there such
> a thing? of course not), then I might try to treat "five second" as
> an error. But we do not really need to enforce English syntax rules,
> and in this case it is more important for the expression to do the
> right thing.
>
> So for me as an English speaker, I overlook the difference between
> "second" and "seconds" and I prefer to have the expression do what
> I expect in either case.
>
> For this reason, it makes sense to me for #second and #seconds to
> be treated as synonyms.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
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