[Tfug] OT: A "musing"

[Bexley Hall]

--- Rich <r-lists at studiosprocket.com> wrote:

> 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

So, your rule seems to *always* add "AND".
Or, is it only added in this "rightmost triad"?
I.e. would 623451 be:

six hundred and twenty three thousand, four hundred
and fifty one?

or:

six hundred twenty three thousand, four hundred
and fifty one?

(not only one AND in the latter)
 
> 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".

Ah, so you *do* seem to use AND in each "triad"...
 
> 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  

"I pi standing"?  :>  (ask a Greek)

> "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 was trying to avoid all the "special cases".
E.g., street addresses: "in the ten hundred block..."

> 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"...

Yes, working with associates in Manchester found
"big numbers" ambiguous.  (along with the spelling
of Al, "realize", etc.  :> )

> 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.

I.e. no "AND"s...
 
> > 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...

To be fair, I am dealing with the context of
synthetic speech -- which typically suffers
from intelligibility, regardless.  When dealing
with a "formless speaker" (i.e. no visual cues to
pick up) *and* when "asking for it to be repeated"
isn't as easy as just wrinkling your brow (as in
a face-to-face conversation), coming up with a
scheme that allows the user to establish a
"cadence template" in his mind and just "fit"
the speech into that pattern does a lot in terms of
increasing the first pass unaided recognition rate.
 
> > The more you think about this, the more you will
> > find yourself unsure of how YOU *actually* speak
> > them!  :>
> YES!

Time for me to DRIVE my car down the PARKWAY
and PARK it in my DRIVEWAY.... ;-)

Thx,
--don


 
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