[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JK1 /img/forum/go_quote.gif

Fishes is the proper term to use when there are different types of them, and not more than one of the same type. The same is true for foods. As for fish, two or more of the same kind are fish. When two drivers are incorporated into a single unit, it seems improper to use the plural to describe it. For example, someone would say diverse foods, rather than diverse food.

 

The thing is in that example the sentence doesn't say bring "many kinds," it's just implied that instead of a huge batch of paella you might bring a platter of different kinds of dumplings, in which case when you arrive, you say, "help me haul the food," or "help me haul the dumplings." Fishes is more like dumplings than food in use. In the same manner you can walk up to the party and say "help me with the beer/wine/rum!!!," singular form, regardless of whether you have with you a keg the size of a VW, a cooler with several cans of beer, or a cooler with several cans of different kinds of beer.

 

When talking about a headphone though I wouldn't really think much of it if someone used the plural form, unlike the food example. As much as there's the possibility that someone might show up with a kilo of filet and a kilo of ribeye (in which case we'd be using steaks instead of "foods"), with a headphone vs a regular communications device (barring headphones used with such devices) the former is stereo and the latter is mono, whether you hold a phone up to one ear or you're guarding a VIP and you have an IEM with what looks like a telephone cable sticking up the collar of your shirt. 

 

[JK1]

I just noticed that Head-fi has a headphone buying guide. Note the use of the singular "headphone". Also notice that amps are called headphone amps, and not headphones amps.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JK1 /img/forum/go_quote.gif

I just noticed that Head-fi has a headphone buying guide. Note the use of the singular "headphone". Also notice that amps are called headphone amps, and not headphones amps.

 

Yep, that's why I never really noticed that anyone actually uses the plural when referring to a single object, although like I said it's comparable to saying "pants" for example so if I saw it before I never thought much of it. Of course, it does sound weird when referring to amps.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

  I just noticed that Head-fi has a headphone buying guide. Note the use of the singular "headphone". Also notice that amps are called headphone amps, and not headphones amps.

 
That's because it's in adjective form. Panty liner, eyeglass case, etc. 
 
Look, there's two speakers, those are the "phones". You wear them on your head. There's the head. Headphones. Done. End of transaction.

 

[JK1]

   
That's because it's in adjective form. Panty liner, eyeglass case, etc. 
 
Look, there's two speakers, those are the "phones". You wear them on your head. There's the head. Headphones. Done. End of transaction.

A headphone set though is a single item. The fact that it is a dual design doesn't take away from the fact that it is a singular item. Notice that the word bra is used to designate one functional unit with a dual design. 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  A headphone set though is a single item. The fact that it is a dual design doesn't take away from the fact that it is a singular item. Notice that the word bra is used to designate one functional unit with a dual design. 

 
True, just like the pant I'm wearing right now.

 

[oqvist]

 

 

Well seems like it's a lingual/translation thing in Northern Europe, but I don't think the "tele" is included anywhere else. Haven't seen such in boxes or manuals.

 

Technically, or actually, linguistically, "tele" is in the same sense as "telephoto" or "telegraph" or "television" (which like the headphone is part of a receiving+playback system) ie, in a sense it means "bridging a distance." So basically, even if you don't use a headtelephone in the "ring, ring, ring, hello!" sense, you are technically speaking bridging the distance between you and the recording studio, or wherever the program you're listening to/watching was recorded.

 

Also, these guys actually used it in the "ring, ring, ring, hello!" sense...except not literally because it would be more like in the "mayday! filthy commies...surrounded...out of food, ammo...foot frozen, frostbite...ack!!! *bayonet to the throat *chokes on blood" or "Swordfish torpedo, rudder ist kaput, Bismarck in deep Schiit" sense, because long before Fritz Sennheiser had us listening to music on one of his products, he worked on the 1936 Games broadcast system and also was a communications officer during WW2. 


 
I wonder if Man in the High Castle still has a Grado factory in Brooklyn. 

 

Basically, what I'm saying is that long before "headphone" meant "sit back and relax, listen to this," it meant "half the telephone/radio on your head, with the other half - the mic - on the table, so you can use your hands to manipulate the knobs and write down notes," the latter being important if for example you're going to have to pass that message to the infuriated Fuhrer because the Bismarck just sank.

 

I mean, look, it actually says "Kriegsmarine" on this one - before Head-Fi was a huge consumer base, headphones were a lucrative government contract.

 

 

So in these days they did come with a phone/mic thus called headphone? When they ditched the mic they didn´t bather to change the name instead they renamed the original headphone to headset?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oqvist /img/forum/go_quote.gif

So in these days they did come with a phone/mic thus called headphone? When they ditched the mic they didn´t bather to change the name instead they renamed the original headphone to headset?

 

Basically, yeah - and then after a few decades where "headphone" meant as much "music playback" as "communications device," they came up with headset, despite the fact that pilots have been using such systems through those decades anyway and most of them just called them headphones (or radio, but of course that refers to the transmission system, not the interface for it).