[Tfug] OT: A "musing"

[Rich]

On Apr 2, 2007, at 12:18 pm, Bexley Hall wrote:

> The question is:
>
> What rules do "you" use when "pronouncing" numbers?
Interesting linguistics question :-)

I'm from Yorkshire in the north of England, so I pretty much follow  
the standard British English rule, which is:

123 -- a hundred and twenty-three   (note my British hyphen!)
605 -- six hundred and five
1610 -- one thousand six hundred and ten

But:
1000 -- a thousand
   up to 1099 -- a thousand and ninety-nine
1000000 -- a million
   up to 1000099 -- a million and ninety-nine
Above these values, it's back to the first rule:
1000100 -- "one million one hundred"...

And another but, in casual speech:
123 -- one twenty-three
376 -- three seventy-six
up to
999 -- nine ninety-nine
This rule only holds true for 1100 to 1999 for years. Years from 1000  
to 1009 plus 1020, 1030, 1040 etc. are pronounced as normal numbers.

With millions and upwards, "1234567" would be "one million, two  
hundred and thirty-four thousand, five hundred and sixty-seven".

Jeremy's points about rhythm hark back to Bowie's Pi mnemonic (which  
sounds even funnier if you say it with the correct pronunciation of  
"Pi"). In England, the grouping of long number sequences is generally  
in threes, except for imposed groupings like credit cards, phone  
numbers, etc. Some people use paired grouping, with "zero zero" to  
"ninety nine", and whole tens pronounced "three zero" to avoid  
confusion. In German and Dutch, this kind of pairing is the general  
rule.

I generally avoid using the words "billion", "trillion" etc., in  
favour of "thousand million", "million million", etc. because of  
regional variation. The French exported both variants at different  
times -- as with every other European language, they settled on  
billion=10^12, milliard=10^9. The British still can't make up their  
minds, and most haven't heard of a "milliard"...

When speaking about things with units, the unit always stays  
singular, e.g. "twelve foot", because the plural's in the number.  
This is northern British English: standard British has "twelve feet".  
If you think this sounds wrong, you'd better start saying "250  
gigabytes disk" :-)

U.S. English seems to have been influenced by the other Germanic  
languages: 1234567 in Dutch is "één miljoen, twee honderd  
vierendertig duizend, vijf honderd zevenenzestig". Aside from the  
"seven-and-sixty" cognate and smooshing all the words into  
onelongword, this is the standard way U.S. English numbers are formed.

> Etc.  (I am deliberately neglecting variants like
> "sixteen hundred thirty seven" and other contextual
> factors that may play in how each number is rendered).
I suppose this will come out in the thread anyway :-) I find anything  
above "nineteen hundred" sounds weird, or if it's an exact "-ty" like  
"twenty thousand", "thirty thousand", it sounds just plain wrong.

> But, in practice, I have found that the above "rule"
> (which should be evident on inspection) isn't truly
> universally applied.  And, when it *is*, it leads to
> a reduction in clarity (first pass unaided recognition
> rate).
Interesting that it's become the standard then, if it's harder to  
understand. I find the form without "and" to be more difficult to  
parse. Not by much -- I mean, my bank manager hasn't stiffed me... I  
hope...

> The more you think about this, the more you will
> find yourself unsure of how YOU *actually* speak
> them!  :>
YES!

R.