terminology and common usage

Graham. wrote:
On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 16:48:52 +0000, Graham. wrote:

On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 14:54:02 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Related to the discussion elsewhere about gigabites and fairycycles, I
overheard a young woman talking to the Morrisons till operator. She
wanted to know how she could add points to her card (I'm vague about
these promotional things) and said, "So I can do it? I just go on?"
Clearly she meant 'on line' or 'on the computer'. To her it was
superfluous to say any more than 'go on'.

Bill
I suppose there is no other kind now, but elderly people used to say
"coloured television".

Oh and I saw the holiday on Telex.

I had several elderly customers who said Light Programme for ITV and
Home Service for BBC.

Bill

"Mark Carver" wrote in message
...
On 30/11/2014 19:44, Graham. wrote:

Before BBC Radio Manchester opened officially in 1970, they broadcast
a test schedule for a week or so, Included was a promo that mentioned
the transmitter locations and ERP power. The DJ puzzled over this and
said he would give a prize to the first person to ring in and explain
on air what ERP was.

I heard Terry Wogan, (quite recently, 5-6 years ago), reading out
the frequency of Radio Leeds, as 'ninety two point four 'Emm','Aich',
'Zed'. I was amazed that someone who had worked in radio for
over 40 years, didn't know how to pronounce 'MHz'.

When TV and radio stations first started reading out contact email
addresses, a lot of BBC programmes put pauses in strange places:

swapshop-dot [pause] co-dot [pause] uk

rather than

swapshop [pause] dot-co [pause] dot-uk

I know it's arbitrary how you break up an email address into short chunks
when reading it out, but if the whole world does it one way, trust the BBC
to do it the opposite way :-)



What always gives me problems is when foreign countries break phone numbers
into groups of two digits and then regard them as a tens-and-units number:
where we would probably say 123456 as

one-two-three [pause] four-five-six (or, at a pinch, one-two [pause]
three-four [pause] five-six)

they will say

twelve [pause] thirty-four [pause] fifty-six

This is even more of a problem in Germany where numbers are said in
"four-and-twenty blackbirds" notation with the tens and units the opposite
way round. I once watched a German person writing down a phone number that
someone was dictating and he moved his pencil two steps forwards to write
down the units and then one step back to write down the tens for each pair
of digits:

zwolf (12)
vier (four) und dreizig (thirty)
sechs (six) und funfzig (fifty)

whereas if the numbers had been read out in sequence, without any spurious
tens-and-units connotation that is meaningless for a phone number, he could
have written the digits in the order that he heard them:

eins (1) zwei (2) drei (3) vier (4) funf (5) sechs (6)

On 30/11/2014 19:54, Mark Carver wrote:

I heard Terry Wogan, (quite recently, 5-6 years ago), reading out
the frequency of Radio Leeds, as 'ninety two point four 'Emm','Aich',
'Zed'. I was amazed that someone who had worked in radio for
over 40 years, didn't know how to pronounce 'MHz'.




He should have know some of it as 92.4 Mega Pounds was his BBC salary
for the previous year.


--
mailto: news {at} admac {dot] myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 21:37:59 +0000, NY wrote:

This is even more of a problem in Germany where numbers are said in
"four-and-twenty blackbirds" notation with the tens and units the
opposite way round.

I find French numbers confusing when things like 79 is said sixty, ten, nine
and 90 is four twenties, ten - weird.

--

TOJ.

On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 20:07:54 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Graham. wrote:
On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 16:48:52 +0000, Graham. wrote:

On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 14:54:02 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Related to the discussion elsewhere about gigabites and fairycycles, I
overheard a young woman talking to the Morrisons till operator. She
wanted to know how she could add points to her card (I'm vague about
these promotional things) and said, "So I can do it? I just go on?"
Clearly she meant 'on line' or 'on the computer'. To her it was
superfluous to say any more than 'go on'.

Bill
I suppose there is no other kind now, but elderly people used to say
"coloured television".

Oh and I saw the holiday on Telex.

I had several elderly customers who said Light Programme for ITV and
Home Service for BBC.

Bill

Oh I've always thought that. BBC2 is Network 3 naturally.



--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 20:06:50 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Graham. wrote:

I suppose there is no other kind now, but elderly people used to say
"coloured television".

Strangely, coloured mean good for tv sets, bad for people.

Bill

Are you an albino?

--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 19:54:16 +0000, Mark Carver
wrote:

On 30/11/2014 19:44, Graham. wrote:

Before BBC Radio Manchester opened officially in 1970, they broadcast
a test schedule for a week or so, Included was a promo that mentioned
the transmitter locations and ERP power. The DJ puzzled over this and
said he would give a prize to the first person to ring in and explain
on air what ERP was.

I heard Terry Wogan, (quite recently, 5-6 years ago), reading out
the frequency of Radio Leeds, as 'ninety two point four 'Emm','Aich',
'Zed'. I was amazed that someone who had worked in radio for
over 40 years, didn't know how to pronounce 'MHz'.

Patrick Moore, used to read out URLs complete with aich tee tee pee
colon stroke stroke (never slash!) and then really impressively, say
stroke at the end.


--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

Graham. wrote:
On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 20:06:50 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Graham. wrote:

I suppose there is no other kind now, but elderly people used to say
"coloured television".
Strangely, coloured mean good for tv sets, bad for people.

Bill

Are you an albino?

I should have typed 'meant' not 'mean'. It was a reference to the
attitude of some of my elderly customers.

Bill

In article , The Other John
wrote:
On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 21:37:59 +0000, NY wrote:

This is even more of a problem in Germany where numbers are said in
"four-and-twenty blackbirds" notation with the tens and units the
opposite way round.

I find French numbers confusing when things like 79 is said sixty, ten,
nine and 90 is four twenties, ten - weird.

in English that's "four score and ten". Used to be a well known phrase.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

"The Other John" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 30 Nov 2014 21:37:59 +0000, NY wrote:

This is even more of a problem in Germany where numbers are said in
"four-and-twenty blackbirds" notation with the tens and units the
opposite way round.

I find French numbers confusing when things like 79 is said sixty, ten,
nine
and 90 is four twenties, ten - weird.

Though French-speaking countries like Switzerland and Belgium have their
own, more logical numbering system: septante, huitante and nonante for
seventy, eight and ninety - far more straightforward. Apparently during WWII
a German spy in Belgium was unmasked because he used the French soixante-dix
instead of the Belgian septante which made him stand out as a (fake)
Frenchman instead of a true Belgian.

I'm not sure why France or England ever counted in twenties
(quatre-vignts-dix or four score and ten), rather than counting in tens. But
it bewilders me that anyone anywhere in the world should count in any base
other than 10 since that's the number of fingers (plus thumbs) that we have.
Maybe people counted in twenties because they have twenty
fingers+thumbs+toes but you'd have to go barefoot to make that work ;-) And
where did 12 come from as a common base for inches in a foot, or 14 for
pounds in a stone or 16 for ounces in a pound? Utterly bizarre and perverse.