how come people always list the bloke first when they’re talking about dance couples?
3 Comments
Convention (which is an appeal to tradition – which isn’t a good reason) borne out of perception that the guy/lead is the more important part of the couple?
For each name pairing there may be an order that would flow better off the tongue. I suppose it’s possible that for many male-female name pairings the “male & female” pairing could be easier spoken than the reverse, but an effect this subtle wouldn’t come close to explaining the exclusivity of current convention and not work at all when surnames are used.
I seem to remember a discussion on yehoodi about this – perhaps it was one of the podcasts.
It feels weird and unnatural at a comp when an announcer is calling out the couples and exclusively mentioning the dudes first. I wish they’d mix it up.
Personally, and particularly if I know the couple, I tend to, but not always, refer to biggest personality first
I’ve often pondered this too. I wonder if it is a mixture of convention, as lindypenguin suggests, and also a spoken rhythm thing (depending on things like syllable emphasis, whose name ends in a consonant, etc).
Convention (which is an appeal to tradition – which isn’t a good reason) borne out of perception that the guy/lead is the more important part of the couple?
For each name pairing there may be an order that would flow better off the tongue. I suppose it’s possible that for many male-female name pairings the “male & female” pairing could be easier spoken than the reverse, but an effect this subtle wouldn’t come close to explaining the exclusivity of current convention and not work at all when surnames are used.
I seem to remember a discussion on yehoodi about this – perhaps it was one of the podcasts.
It feels weird and unnatural at a comp when an announcer is calling out the couples and exclusively mentioning the dudes first. I wish they’d mix it up.
Personally, and particularly if I know the couple, I tend to, but not always, refer to biggest personality first
I always heard my first couples as women-men. Carla and Kevin, Mia and Yoshi, etc. though I always thought it was a phonetic thing at most.
I’ve often pondered this too. I wonder if it is a mixture of convention, as lindypenguin suggests, and also a spoken rhythm thing (depending on things like syllable emphasis, whose name ends in a consonant, etc).
This column appeared in my local rag a few weeks back, on this very topic: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/4958641/Jack-and-Jill-or-Jill-and-Jack.