terminology and common usage

"Martin" wrote in message
...
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)

OTOH 80 million Germans have no problem with the way they say numbers. I
worked
in Germany for years and never saw anybody write down a telephone number
the way
you saw. Maybe he was dyslexic :-)

Well I've seen it fairly often when I was over in Germany (demonstrating my
company products at Hannover Fair) so it wasn't just one guy. Maybe it's
easier to write down each digit as soon as you hear it (even if they are out
of sequence) than to remember both digits (as four-and-thirty) and then
write them down in the correct order (the 3 followed by the 4).

Irrespective of the German "four and twenty blackbirds" complication, why
*do* some countries regard pairs of digits in a phone number as tens and
units - thirty four seventeen rather than three four one seven? it's like
referring to decimal number as "point forty seven" rather than "point four
seven" (or preferably "nought point four seven"). (*)

I gather that the GPO did some research in the very early days of the
telephone into the optimum grouping of digits and found that three digits
was the most that people could take in as a single "lump" when a long number
was read out to them, and there was some reason why it was found preferable
to use groups of three rather than two.


The other "funny" with Germany is that they regard a time of xx:30 as being
half-before rather than half-past. And then they colloquially omit the
"before". This led to a lot of confusion. Some Germans would quote a time of
"halb vier" ("half four") which means what we would term half past three.
But others, knowing that they were talking to an English person, would refer
to the same time as "halb drei" ("half three"), correcting for the different
convention, but those English people who knew of the difference would
interpret this as half past two - in other words, both people would correct
for the other's convention, and end up making things worse :-)


(*) Then there's the habit of BBC newsreaders referring to "an increase of
half of one percent" rather than "an increase of nought point five percent"
which (to may ears anyway) sounds less clumsy and more consistent with "an
increase of three point five percent". I've even heard "an increase of
nought point seven of one percent" :-). Come to think of it, given that all
typewriters and computers have had the % symbol for many years, which do a
lot of newspapers write "1.7 pc" rather than "1.7 %"?

Ah as Spike Milligan said, the bbc thought his show was the go on show.

I guess in this case, go on can only mean what is being talked about. You
probably came in in the middle.
However there are people out there who never use the Internet, what do they
do?
The wider question is though, most people would much rather have cheaper
goods than points on a card which can only be redeemed at certain stores and
for certain gthings.
Its all part of the manipulation of the public by large companies.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
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

Which reminds me, I listened to a recent PC world advert on the radio, and
they said the items being sold were available in pink and blue, laptops as
it happens, and I thought, this sounds like stereotyping to me, I thought we
had got away from pink for girls blue for boys years ago. Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Graham." wrote in message
...
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".



--

Graham.

%Profound_observation%

Shop staff can also be very annoying when they don't know about stuff.
Recently M/S tried to refuse a friend of mines card as it was a chip and
signature one. The blind do have issues with when to put in pins etc, as
they cannot read the display, so hence the old chip and signature card are
often used.
These two, male as it happened got really rud to her over this, saying they
did not accept them. Of course they do, these obviously never actually were
trained.
Its all part of the equality act.
They were also heard telling a frail looking old lady to go on line and
click whatever it was to get more information about an item. Not a clue.
Some people need to go on a brain engaging course.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
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

In South Africa coloured meant mixed race, which apparently was bad for some
reason.

We are indeed a funny race.
Brian Matthew played the US version of Charlie Drakes My Boomerang wont
come back last week, and it was clearly obvious that the lyrics were over
dubbed with practiced till I was blue in the face instead of the original
black in the face, and the flying doctor crash and some other bits were
edited out as well.

This was years ago, so pc was alive and well back then, but not here.
I had actually hoped that we could treat such things intelligently, as the
humour they were intended to be, but it seems not.
Last week BBC London late at night played Tommy steeles Little Whit Bull.
It got a lot of complaints about bull fighting, considering the film it
was from was called Tommy the Toreador, which I doubt has been shown
recently it seems that people cannot separate period pieces from the new
norms.
Norm, never heard of him.

Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
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

Bring back the black and white Minstrels, the big thing when colour first
started on TV.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
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

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Shop staff can also be very annoying when they don't know about stuff.
Recently M/S tried to refuse a friend of mines card as it was a chip and
signature one. The blind do have issues with when to put in pins etc, as
they cannot read the display, so hence the old chip and signature card are
often used.

I'd have thought that if the customer couldn't read the display, the
assistant would simply say "it's asking for your PIN", "it says that your
PIN has been accepted (or rejected)" etc. Rather than having the customer
use a less secure chip and signature system. The cashier in my bank always
says "OK, can you type your PIN in now" and "Right, you can remove your card
now", even though I can see perfectly well. Maybe he's got into the habit of
doing it for the benefit of the relatively few blind customers and now
(maybe without realising it) does it for everyone.

I can see that it would be a problem with a cashpoint machine because there
isn't an assistant to read out the on-screen messages.

Obviously you'd only want the assistant to read the messages for you - you
would want to be sure that they weren't also looking at which digits you
typed as your PIN.

In article ,
Brian Gaff wrote:
Bring back the black and white Minstrels, the big thing when colour first
started on TV.
Brian

and "Spot Black"

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

"Martin" wrote in message
news
The other "funny" with Germany is that they regard a time of xx:30 as
being
half-before rather than half-past. And then they colloquially omit the
"before".

So do the Dutch. 96 million people have no problem coping with this.

In UK they omit the after.

The problem is not that there are two different conventions. It's when two
people from different conventions both try to correct for the other's
difference at the same time - and end up being no better off :-)

The best thing is to be unambiguous even if it means being more wordy. Even
if I was used to saying "half two" and meaning "2:30", I'd say "half past
two" to a German. It may not be how he'd say it but it's unambiguous and he
had easily convert it in his head. Likewise I'd expect a German who was
aware of the British convention to say (though in German) "half before
three" which would be equally unambiguous (if strange to my ears). The
problem only comes when both people say "half two" and mean two different
things.

Likewise I'm well aware of the US convention of writing dates in month, day,
year order, so I will always write "3 Feb[ruary] 2014" which is unambiguous,
whereas "3/2/14" could mean either: have I used my own notation which the
American should mentally swap round or have I already swapped it round for
his benefit?

On Mon, 1 Dec 2014 10:02:07 -0000, "NY" wrote:

"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,

This includes some suggestions for the origin of base-12 counting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dozen

or 14 for
pounds in a stone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_%...ort h_America

During the Middle Ages, a conveniently-sized rock was often chosen
as a local standard for weighing agricultural commodities, but the
weight of such rocks varied with the commodity and region. By the
late Middle Ages, international trade, such as England's exports of
raw wool to Florence, required a fixed standard and, in 1389, a
royal statute of Edward III fixed the stone of wool at 14 pounds.


or 16 for ounces in a pound? Utterly bizarre and perverse.

The choice of the sizes of a pound and a stone seems to be based on what
was a convenient standard measure for the things that were to be
measured, not necessarily for arithmetical tidiness.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)