How to handle numbers in your target language?

[jeff_lindqvist]

I don't agree that saying phone numbers as two or three digit numbers makes any sense at all. It takes more concentration to en- and decode a three digit number than three single digit numbers that are said with a pause before and after. The only time it makes sense to say two or three digit numbers is when memorizing and recalling a phone number, something we rarely do nowadays. Plus, people who memorized a phone number really well and can rattle it off are often too fast for the listener to write it down, let alone remember it without taking a note ...

I'd say it's fairly common to write down (or say) certain phone numbers in twos or threes. It's easier to memorize fewer "chunks". Many services have "rhyming" phone numbers (e.g. 200 200, 118 118, 114 14, xx 00 00, xx yy xx and so on).

[Bao]

I'd say it's fairly common to write down (or say) certain phone numbers in twos or threes. It's easier to memorize fewer "chunks". Many services have "rhyming" phone numbers (e.g. 200 200, 118 118, 114 14, xx 00 00, xx yy xx and so on).

I didn't say it was uncommon, I said it didn't make sense in the context of the way we currently use phone numbers to pronounce them a two- or three digit numbers, rather than as groups of individual digits.

[Alphathon]

I'd say it's fairly common to write down (or say) certain phone numbers in twos or threes. It's easier to memorize fewer "chunks". Many services have "rhyming" phone numbers (e.g. 200 200, 118 118, 114 14, xx 00 00, xx yy xx and so on).

I didn't say it was uncommon, I said it didn't make sense in the context of the way we currently use phone numbers to pronounce them a two- or three digit numbers, rather than as groups of individual digits.

Is using 2-3 digit numbers an American thing like saying X hundred instead of Y thousand Z hundred? Here in the UK phone numbers would normally be said simply as blocks of grouped digits unless one of the "blocks" is a round number (i.e. X hundred). In my experience you normally get the area code (which usually starts 01), then two blocks of thee digits, so 01XYXYXYXYX is read as 0-1-X-Y-X, Y-X-Y, X-Y-X. I've heard that when Americans come over here it takes a little getting used to.

There are other numerical differences too, like the insertion of "and" before a unit ending of a >1000 number in British English. Numberphile made a video a while back which talked about some of them.

[Bao]

Is using 2-3 digit numbers an American thing like saying X hundred instead of Y thousand Z hundred? Here in the UK phone numbers would normally be said simply as blocks of grouped digits unless one of the "blocks" is a round number

You're sensible people. I don't know about Americans; but French people group phone numbers as tens (and their numbers are complicated enough), and many Germans as tens and hundreds. Just because we learned to do it that way.