Large hadron collider (ping Bob Lieblich)

There is a discussion going on today at Language Log about whether the Large Hadron Collider is a large collider of hadrons or a collider of large hadrons, which led our esteemed colleague Bob Lieblich (or someone else with the same name) to remark:

I frequently hear "Empire STATE Building"

Indeed, if he heard me say it that's what he'd hear, because that's what virtually everyone I've ever heard mention it called it.

I assume that he meant that the People Who Know Better call it the EMpire State Building (or maybe Empire State BUILDing?) because it was named after the Empire State. But does everyone stress Empire State on the first syllable? My natural inclination would be to stress all three syllables more or less equally, though I've had little occasion to use the term (other than in the complete name of the building) since I learned, some half a century ago, that New York was called that. And if one stresses the state like that it would make the stress on the name of the building fall almost automatically on, the STATE. Stressing it on the first syllable makes for four unstressed syllables in succession, and most people who don't have Russian as their mother tongue find that a bit difficult to manage without having the whole phrase fade away in a rather feeble way inappropriate for what I still think of as the highest building in the world.

It's a bit like "necessarily", which I was taught as a child to say as "NECessarily" because "necessARily" was vulgar and uneducated. To some degree I still do, though I usually slur it a bit to "NECess'rily". Nonetheless, in BrE at least, I get the impression that "necesARily" has won.



--
athel

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Relevant Pages

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