Numeric miscellany (was: numeration system)

This takes up the "extra-#1" threads  :)

=================== ZERO ===============================================
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 09:37 , John Cowan wrote:
> Ray Brown scripsit:
>
>> In the early day of the telephone, it was found that "nought" and "four"
>> were readily confused over bad lines, so people got into the habit of
>> saying "oh" for 0 ("zero" is becoming quite often used nowadays also).
>
> The telephone is still reckoned an American invention,
I did not want to imply that it was otherwise.

> I think, and "nought"
> for 0 is rare here, so I don't think that's the explanation.  I think it
> more likely that "zero" was the only disyllabic number (with the marginal
> exception of "seven"), and using "oh" made it easier to keep to the
> rhythm.
I was speaking in just insular British terms - I should have expressed
myself more clearly. The custom may well have had a different origin in
north American. It is quite possible that the habit in one country
influenced that in another.

The explanation I gave above is one I was told many, many years ago and
certainly makes sense in a British context.
---------------------
On Thursday, December 16, 2004, at 02:16 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 12:41:49PM +1100, Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
>> I was under the understanding that Americans didn't generally use 'oh'
>> for zero? Mistaken?
>
> Mistaken.
[snip]
> applicability that they become set phrases, too.  This leads to the
> occasional odd mixture, such as "four oh four five five five two one
> zero three".
That happens in Rightpondia too, and IME not just occasionally. We even
get hybrids like: "oh eight hundred seven two three zero four four" (0800
723 044).

The use of 'zero' in giving phone numbers etc was practically unknown when
I was young. It seems to have have become more common since the widespread
use of personal computers. Those uncompromising machines have made people
realize that 0 and O are different symbols   :-)
---------------------

> On Thursday, December 16, 2004, at 05:35 , Muke Tever wrote:
[snip]
>> Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>> In the early day of the telephone, it was found that "nought" and "four"
>> were readily confused over bad lines, so people got into the habit of
>> saying "oh" for 0 ("zero" is becoming quite often used nowadays also).
>
> That seems weird, as "oh" sounds a lot more like "four" than "nought"
> does--"nought" /nAt/ has an entirely different vowel from /for/ and /o/--
Not in Britain! In RP 'nought' is /nO:t/ and 'four' is /fO:/, whereas 'oh'
  is /@w/     :)

=================================== TWO ========================
On Thursday, December 16, 2004, at 12:27 , Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> writes:
> ...
>> Similarly in german the standard 'zwei' is not used when giving numbers
>> over the phone,
>
> Oh, that's too strong a restriction.  It is.  But it might be replaced
> by 'zwo' if the listener asks.  OTOH, some people use it regularly
> without the needs for constraining situations like phone talks.
Thanks for the correction - I was taught that 'zwo' was always used, but
not all teachers are correct :)

>> because it gets confused with 'drei'; the (archaic?  dialect?) 'zwo'
>> is used instead.
>
> 'zwo' is originally a different form of the number two in those days
> when it had declension.
Right - thanks.

>  Just like English 'two' I assume it derives from the masculine
> accusative form.
No - like the Scots _twa_ or _twae_ (depending on dialect) it derives from
the Old English twá /twa:/, the nom. & acc. feminine & neuter. (Old Eng.
neuter also had alternate form tú /tu:/ which sounds the same as the
modern form, but this would have give *tow /taw  :)

The archaic _twain_ (still very occasionally used in certain contexts) is
from the Old English masculine nom. & acc. _twégen_  /'twe:jen/
------------------------
On Thursday, December 16, 2004, at 05:40 , Muke Tever wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:04:07 -0500, J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...>
>  wrote:
[snip]
>> I didn't know there were indoeuropean languages with a distinct
>> accusative
>> form!
>
> Latin has:
>
>      m    f    n
> nom  duo  duae duo
> acc  duos duas duo
>
> (though there is also "duo" for m. acc.)
There is, and it was the normal Classical form. In fact in the earliest
Latin _duo_ did duty for the nom. & acc. of all three genders. By the
Classical period the separate feminines, as given by Muke, had developed
and one also occasionally finds _dua_ for the nom. & acc. neuter. By the
end of the Classical period the masc. accusative _duos_ was also in use.
The Romance forms are derived from _duos_ and _duas_

========================= OTHERS =======================================
On Wednesday, December 15, 2004, at 09:37 , John Cowan wrote:
>> 5 and 9 still cause problems and people will use forms like 'fivah' or
>> 'ninah' in order to make the final consonant clearer.
>
> The underlying forms are "fiver" and "niner", based on what rhotic
> speakers use.  Before this convention was adopted, the British military
> used "fife" for "five" over the radio.
Yes, you're right "fife" was used as the voiceless fricative carries a lot
better than the voiced one. But the point is that it was found necessary
where there is 'noise' to emphasize in some way or other the final
consonant of 'five' annd 'nine'.
--------------------------------
On Thursday, December 16, 2004, at 12:27 , Henrik Theiling wrote:
> BTW, English 'fifty' and 'fifteen' is also very error prone,
> especially in larger numbers like 'fifty/fifteen thousand', and
> especially for foreigners that put the accents on the wrong
> syllables. :-)
The British norm is to stress the first syllable in all these words. The
second syllable may get stressed if someone is trying to emphasize the
difference. "I said fifTEEN, not fifTY" - but tben then it doesn't always
work if there's a lot of background noise.

Yes, they are very error prone which is probably why anglophones developed
the habit of (usually) giving telephone digit by digit. The French method
of giving them in two digit groups would simply lead to too many
complications. Just imagine doing something like 50.14.17.60 in English!

I suppose the most common way of diambiguating is simply to 'spell out'
the digits:
"Did you say eighteen?"
"No! eighty - eight, oh"

I often disambiguate by giving them in French (or some other language, if
appropriate):
"Did you say 15?"
"No! cinquante!"

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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