Re: CHAT: postcodes

En réponse à Roger Mills <romilly@...>:

> Eamon Graham wrote:
>
>
> >Here in France, the first two digits refer to the Department
> >(something like a county in Anglo-Saxon countries).  For example,
> >Paris is 75.  The remaining digits refer to a location within the
> >Department - 75012 is the 12th Arrondissement of Paris.
> >
> IIRC-- back in the olden days, before postal codes were thought to be
> necessary, 75 was the Paris prefix on automobile license plates.
I suppose you mean suffix. IIRC licence plates always had the department number
at the end.

  Did
> they
> just adapt that system to the mails? Quite logical, if so.
>
IIRC, departments were numbers already before licence plates had been invented.
I'd rather think both systems used the department number which already existed.

> US postal codes are based on relatively large regions; telephone codes
> on
> smaller regions.  Needless to say, there is no correlation between the
> two
> systems.
French phone numbers used to be 6 digits, with a two digit indicative (except
for Paris and its region, which had bigger indicatives). This indicative had
nothing to do with the department number though (Seine-Maritime had the
indicative 35, but the department number 76). Then it went through a first
reform (because it didn't allow for enough phone numbers): the indicative
became mandatory even for local calls (so numbers became 8 digits long),
numbers in Paris were also adapted to a 8 digit format, and to call from a
place in France to another, you just had to use the 8-digit number, except when
calling to the region of Paris when you were not in it (then you had to add the
indicative 16-11) or when you called somewhere outside of the region of Paris
when you were in that region (then you added 16 in front). But even this system
became obsolete (not giving enough phone numbers, and moreover not agreeing
with international norms), so they made the move to 10-digit dialing, adding to
the 8-digit numbers a mandatory 2-digit prefix. France was divided in five
zones (containing full regions): the region of Paris got the 01, the North-West
02, the North-East 03, the South-East 04 and the South-West 05. Moreover, this
system allowed for other prefixes, like the 06 for mobile phones and the 08 for
administrative numbers, company numbers, free numbers (they had a special
indicative before) or phone-sex lines :)) . Funny enough, though I'm only 26, I
saw all three systems :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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