gin & kerosene ([info]ugly_boy) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,

Numbers and digits

In English we often deal with numbers differently in common speech than we might in proper, especially written, language or in mathematical contexts. Decimals, zeros, years and multiples of ten and years are some cases that come to mind. For example we might read:

  • 2.7 as "two seven" instead of "two point seven"
  • 0.7 as "point seven" instead of "zero point seven"
  • 0.07 as "point O seven" (pronounced as in the letter 'O' rather than the digit zero)
  • $19.95 as "nineteen ninety-five" instead of "nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents," and never as "nineteen point nine five dollars" or "ninenteen and ninety-five one hundredths of a dollar"
  • $0.05 as "five cents" instead of "point zero five cents dollars" or "zero point zero five cents dollars"
  • 1995 as "nineteen ninety-five" insted of "one thousand nine-hundred and ninety-five"
  • 2010 as "twenty-ten" instead of "two thousand and 10" or "two thousand ten"
  • (the year) '10 as "ten"
  • (the year) '01 as "O-one"
  • 3.05 as "three O five" instead of "three point zero five"
  • 1,100 as "eleven hundred" instead of "one thousand [and] one hundred"

In many cases proper understanding of the spoken number depends on some knowledge of the context. For example a price quotes as "nineteen ninety five" could refer to $19.95 or $1995.00 and it's up to the speaker and listener to understand what is the correct figure based on a reasonable price range for the item in question. If it's a DVD it probably refers to the $19.95, if it's a used car then one would assume the price is $1995.00. The words "dollars" and "cents" are often omitted, except when something costs less than a dollar. I'm not sure if this is handled the same way outside of the US, or in different parts of the country.

In textbooks and other materials dashes and decimals are often used to separate different sections. For example section seven of chapter two is often written as either "2.7" or "2-7" and in either case a teacher might tell his class to "read section two-seven tonight." "Two point seven" or "two dash seven" might also be used, but I don't think I've ever heard "two hyphen seven" for 2-7. English speakers will also often replace thousand with "k" (from kilo) or "grand" or "G's." So you might hear someone say "She made 80 G's last year." I assume the G should be capitalized since this is how we normally refer to a letter by itself, but not the k since it is not capitalized in the SI system (as in kg for kilogram).

How would speakers of other languages commonly deal with the examples I've listed? Is it different from the "proper" way of reading the number? Are there other unique or interesting cases where number or digits are treated differently? Are there any English uses I've missed, or ones I've listed that you disagree with? This is certainly not an comprehensive list, just some things I was thinking about today when my math instructor was talking about tonight's assignment.

Tags: american english, english, multiple languages, numbers

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  • 41 comments

[info]lexabear

July 15 2010, 19:38:24 UTC 1 year ago

$0.05 as "five cents" instead of "point zero five cents" or "zero point zero five cents"

Verizon does!

[info]spamsink

July 15 2010, 19:49:08 UTC 1 year ago

You beat me to it.

[info]ugly_boy

1 year ago

[info]stereosymbiosis

July 15 2010, 19:40:40 UTC 1 year ago

$0.05 as "five cents" instead of "point zero five cents" or "zero point zero five cents"

point zero five cents would be 1/20 of a penny instead of five cents though

[info]stereosymbiosis

July 15 2010, 19:42:29 UTC 1 year ago

and, I've never heard 2.7 read as "two seven" but rather "two point seven." it might just be a regional thing though.

[info]sollersuk

July 15 2010, 19:57:39 UTC 1 year ago

UK:

2.7: never, ever "two seven". The same for 19.95 and 3.05
$0.05: surely that is zero point zero dollars, not zero point zero cents? And what's improper about calling five cents, five cents? Missing out the point would be hideously ambiguous, and as the convention is to say "thirty-four" for 34 and "point three four" for 0.34, "two seven" would probably be interpreted as 0.27. I have my own confusion with decimals but that's due to having a partly French education, and French uses a comma for decimals and a point as a separator for thousands.

As for "the year '10" as "ten", if it's short for "2010" the only question is whether it's "two thousand and ten" or "twenty ten", and I've never come across anybody calling 1995 anything but "nineteen ninety five".

Most of these are short ways of writing in numerals things that are standard as words in speech, and here in the UK in legal documents numbers are written as both numerals and words: eg "One thousand five hundred and sixty-four pounds fifty pence (£1,564.50)". Earlier documents often give the date in words, not numbers, e.g. "The twenty-fifth day of June Eighteen hundred and seventy-five". And nobody would refer to the Battle of Hastings as happening in "One thousand and sixty-six" rather than "Ten sixty-six".

[info]hoyland54

July 15 2010, 22:12:29 UTC 1 year ago

One could/would(?) say "Nineteen pounds ninety-fix" though, right? (Presumably that's a holdover from before decimalization.

[info]sollersuk

1 year ago

[info]hoyland54

1 year ago

[info]ugly_boy

1 year ago

[info]iiiskaaa

July 15 2010, 20:05:45 UTC 1 year ago

$0.05 as "five cents" instead of "point zero five cents" or "zero point zero five cents"

I think you mean "point zero five dollars." There's another symbol that would be read as "cents."

I've never heard something like 2.7 said out loud as "two seven."

[info]aswanargent

July 15 2010, 23:10:19 UTC 1 year ago

I was starting to wonder if I was the only one who'd noticed that.

[info]ugly_boy

1 year ago

[info]ugly_boy

1 year ago

[info]dcseain

July 15 2010, 20:32:10 UTC 1 year ago

As i was taught, two thousand ten = 2010 and two thousand and ten = 2000.10

[info]ugly_boy

July 16 2010, 02:38:25 UTC 1 year ago

Very interesting; I don't think I would ever get 2000.10 from "two thousand and ten," unless it were proceeded by "cents" or some other word.

[info]sollersuk

1 year ago

[info]ugly_boy

1 year ago

[info]inner_v0ice

July 15 2010, 21:14:00 UTC 1 year ago

Since you asked, there's actually an interesting phenomenon--Filipinos, at least in Manila, deal with numbers in three languages. They tend to put any whole numbers below 100 and simple whole numbers in Tagalog, amounts of money up to 80 pesos and certain ages in (bastardized) Spanish, and everything else (huge numbers, numbers above 100 not rounded to the nearest hundred/thousand, decimals, fractions, years) in English.
I know in the abstract that there are ways to indicate decimals and fractions in Tagalog, but I don't know what they are because all my math classes took place in English, and I don't believe I've ever heard anyone use them in everyday life. I do know how to say large numbers in Tagalog, but EVERYONE thinks it's just too long and clunky to be worth the trouble.

15 = labing-lima (Tagalog)
15 years old = singkwenta anyos (Spanish-derived)
20 = dalawampu (Tagalog)
20 pesos = bente (Spanish-derived)
25 = dalawampu't lima (Tagalog)
a 25-centavo coin (or 25 pesos) = bente-singko (Spanish-derived)
80 = walumpu (Tagalog)
80 years old = otsenta anyos (Spanish-derived)
80 pesos = otsenta pesos (Spanish-derived)
1,500 = one thousand five hundred (English)
2,000 = dalawang daan (Tagalog)
the year 2000 = two thousand (English)
20,000 - dalawampung daan (Tagalog) OR twenty thousand (English)

(in elementary school we were forced to memorize dates in Tagalog -- "isang libo, walong daan, siyam na pu't walo", literally "one thousand eight hundred ninety-eight," is 1898 -- but NOBODY does that in real life.)

When using English (for all those fractions/decimals/complicated numbers), we seem to tend to use what you consider "mathematical style" rather than your examples of "common speech."

[info]inner_v0ice

July 15 2010, 21:25:35 UTC 1 year ago

*facepalms* So, to actually be clear about my answer, a Manila Tagalog speaker would handle pretty much all of your examples in English, except I guess 0.05 pesos would be "limang centavos" (five centavos).

[info]rfk

July 15 2010, 22:23:14 UTC 1 year ago

2,000 = dalawang daan (Tagalog)
the year 2000 = two thousand (English)
20,000 - dalawampung daan (Tagalog) OR twenty thousand (English)


what? daan = 100, libo = 1000 right?

[info]tisoi

1 year ago

[info]tisoi

July 16 2010, 01:36:57 UTC 1 year ago

I was never educated in Tagalog, but it's funny you guys had to learn the dates like that. Sometimes, I would tell my lola or mom a date or some high figure in pure Tagalog and she'd get mad at me and tell me to say it in English. LOL

By the way, the guideline I have heard over the years was to use numbers under 15 or 20 in Tagalog. Everything else is in Spanish. But of course, English came and made a bigger mess.

[info]gitl_eli7

1 year ago

[info]hoyland54

July 15 2010, 22:14:55 UTC 1 year ago

I would say "Section two seven", but I don't view that 2.7 as 2.7 the number, for which I'd always say "Two point seven". In a book/paper/whatever, the "two seven" is, to my mind, an abbreviation of "section 2, subsection 7" or whatever the appropriate divisions are.

[info]kaji_sensei

July 16 2010, 00:46:04 UTC 1 year ago

Likewise for version numbers (e.g. Windows 3.14 = "Windows three one four", OS X v10.6.8 = "OS X ten six eight").

[info]hoyland54

1 year ago

[info]ugly_boy

1 year ago

[info]k0dama

July 16 2010, 02:14:17 UTC 1 year ago

In Korean we always state the position of the number, so we don't have that confusion... So 2010 is always: two-thousand-ten-year; 19950 won (about 19.95USD) is read: One ten thousand[man], nine thousand[chun], nine hundred[bek], five ten[shibp] won.

I think the way English adapted to big/unusual numbers is interesting though. Like you mentioned, depending on the context, the value of the number changes (DVD vs car). Lately a friend of mine has been talking about buying a house, and he always talks about houses by only stating the thousands number, such as "That house is one-fifty." (That house has an asking price of $150,000.)

[info]puppet_princess

July 16 2010, 03:12:10 UTC 1 year ago

Chinese is the same, which is probably why Korea says numbers this way.

89,667 - 八万九千六百六十七 (ba wan-jiu qian-liu bai-liu shi-qi) literally means, eight ten thousands, nine thousands, six hundreds, six tens and seven.

[info]puppet_princess

July 16 2010, 03:05:08 UTC 1 year ago

As far as I am aware most European languages read out the date as one number not two, 1999 = one-thousand-ninety-nine not nineteen ninety-nine. Or, at least for Italian and French.

[info]sovietkitsch

July 16 2010, 06:42:23 UTC 1 year ago

In most cases in French, years are read "one thousand nine hundred ninety-five." But there are certain years where you can say "nineteen hundred ninety-five" and it won't sound off to a French speaker. For the life of me I can't remember exactly which, it might be for things in the past century or two. I feel like there was a discussion about it here but I don't know what entry.

I have my GPS set in French and it says things like "zéro virgule sept" ("zero comma seven") for "O.7" (since the French use commas to separate decimals). I would read it in English as "7 tenths of a mile" or maybe "point seven miles". Obviously I'm not sure if the GPS speaks completely idiomatic French though. ;)

[info]hoyland54

July 16 2010, 13:45:44 UTC 1 year ago

Obviously I'm not sure if the GPS speaks completely idiomatic French though. ;)

My guess is quite possibly not. My mother's American GPS reads the B1253 in the UK as "B one thousand two hundred fifty-three" rather than "B one two five three", which is, I think, what people say. (At least, it's what my family says.)

[info]cafecomics

July 16 2010, 15:47:11 UTC 1 year ago

I'm used to saying years by hundreds, not thounsands, when they're between 1200 and 1999. "Dix-sept cent quatre-vingt-neuf" and not "mille sept cent quatre-vingt-neuf". Thinking about it, when it comes to 20th century years, I use both systems.

[info]annamaryse

July 16 2010, 10:10:45 UTC 1 year ago

Back to US English and salaries -- also common to house prices... I have seen "80K" with the K capitalized often, and also referring to larger numbers 1.5M for "One point Five Million" and some speakers will abbreviate the word 'million' and say 'one point five mil'

And then often the speaker or ad will drop the denomination altogether and simply say something like "a sweet deal in the low 300's..."

[info]cafecomics

July 16 2010, 16:41:10 UTC 1 year ago

We don't drop hundreds and thousands in french but we do drop units and points (comas in french). So "six quatre-vingt-quinze" (six ninety five) is always understood as 6.95 (or 6,95/"six virgule quatre-vingt-quinze" in french).

We don't drop zeros. "Zero deux" usually always means 0.2. If we're talking about money, we'd rather say "vingt centimes/cents" than "zero vingt euros".

I don't know how it is now but before the euro, portuguese people usually expressed medium to large sums in "contos" (short for "contos de réis"), not escudos. One conto = 1000 escudos. And my grandparents kept expressing smaller sums in thousands of réis The portuguese real was replaced in 1911! Some french people were still counting in old francs (dead since 1960) when the country switched to the euro.

20 escudos = 20,000 réis (= 0.10 €)
20 contos = 20,000 escudos = 20,000,000 réis (= 100 €)

[info]ankewehner

July 26 2010, 21:07:59 UTC 1 year ago

German uses hundreds for years. That is, 1995 is "neunzehnhundertfünfundneunzig", "nineteen hundred ninety-five"... at least until 1999; after that it's two thousand rather than twenty hundred.

The basic shape in your first example is used for prices, and sometimes measures of distance... I think you can use it for anything in metres and centimetres, but it's the only way to go when talking about how tall someone is. I mean, if someone asked how tall I was, I'd answer "ein Meter sechzig", or "einssechzig", but not, like some English-speakers I've seen using metric, "eins komma sechs Meter".
A common way to name sums of money including sense is something like "zehn Euro achtunsiebzig", leaving out mention of "cents".
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