为什么美国人数秒时习惯说One Mississippi呢?这是一个连美国人自己也说不清楚的问题。

　　如果你喜欢看美剧，你会经常看到当一个人希望稳定一下情绪，过几秒再做下一个动作的时候，会习惯地在1、2、3后加上一个词“Mississippi”，其实这在许多美国人的生活中已经形成了一个约定俗成的习惯。

　　我们很难能找到它的起源，不过大部分人认为这是美国人在童年时候的就已经学到的一种数秒的方法，因为读Mississippi这个单词刚好大约需要一秒钟时间，One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi...雨天的时候孩子们看到闪电，父母和老师便让他们用这种方法开始数秒，等雷声响起的时候孩子们就可以根据数到的秒数来计算闪电发生的地方距离自己有多远了(the speed of sound is about 1/5 of a mile per second)，这大概是美国基础教育中的一种很简便很实用的物理教学方法。

　　为什么不用其他的单词而一定要用Mississippi呢?很多人认为这是因为Mississippi这个词是小孩学习拼写时最开始遇到的比较复杂的单词之一，“It's one of the first "hard" words most of us learn to spell.”于是人们用的多了，便成为一个沿用下来的说法。

　　当然，有时候你还可以听到其他类似的说法，例如，ONE steam boat, TWO steam boat...我们还可以把加的词放在数字前面，如 Mississippi One, Mississippi two...或 one thousand-one, one thousand-two...等等。

　　One Mississippi是美国人的数秒方法，如果你来到其他英语国家，可能听到的就不再会是Mississippi(密西西比)了，比如英国人小时候首先学到的词不可能是Mississippi。关于这一点我们还有一个笑话，大家不妨看看能不能理解：

　　A Canadian was observing teaching methods in schools in several African countries.

　　In one, she found the children doing a science lesson, timing the swing of a pendulum(钟摆). The lesson had evidently been prepared in the US as the children were counting "Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three ..."

　　After the lesson the Canadian gave a talk and mentioned that if children in her country were doing this experiment, they would probably use a Canadian word like "Saskatchewan"(加拿大的萨斯喀彻温省，注意它的最后一个音节) to do the timing.

　　The next day, the Canadian happened to drop in on the class and found them still timing the pendulum's swing, but today they were counting "Saskatche one, Saskatche two ..."