Re: numeration system

On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 04:37:02PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> The telephone is still reckoned an American invention, I think, and "nought"
> for 0 is rare here
I'd say "rare" is quite an understatement.  Most Americans won't even
know what you mean if you use "nought" to mean "zero".  That might be
changing if they hadn't slavishly translated the Harry Potter books into
American... :)  Apparently "ought" for "0" survives in some dialects,
including whichever one the Beverly Hillbillies supposedly speak, since
Jethro Bodine was a big fan of the spy "double-ought seven".

We also don't regard general circular figures as "zeroes"; the letter,
rather than the digit, takes precedence.  So, for example, the two sides
in the game of Tic-Tac-Toe (known to Rightpondians as "Noughts and
Crosses") are "X's and O's" /'Ek.s@z/ and /Ou_^:z/.


> I don't think that's the explanation.  I think it
> more likely that "zero" was the only disyllabic number
The only disyllabic digit, rather; plenty of disyllabic numbers
(a big group starts at "thirteen", for instance).

> (with the marginal exception of "seven"),
Why is it marginal?  It is, like your earlier example of "heaven",
collapsed to a monosyllable in lyrics, but it is nevertheless quite distinctly
bisyllabic in normal use.

> > 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.
There was also some phonetic convention or other that used "fi-yiv" /'fai_^.jIv/
for 5, IIRC.

Oh, and in proper US military phonetic recital, 0 is "zero", O is
"Oscar", and "oh" is an exclamation. :)

-Marcos