A Chinese rant about the French language

[marconatrix]

Can somebody explain "elephant" --- WTF?

[Bob Johnson]

"elegant"

[Rui]

The "who the hell..." part of that sentence literally translates to "Who with Laozi..." which is hilarious. I hope that's (an) actual way of expressing that in Chinese...

[Kereb]

Fun fact: when giving out a Canadian phone number, politeness mandates that you arrange the numerals from the lowest to the highest value.

but this has yet to cause us difficulty as there are only six phones in the entire country

[maıráí]

In conclusion, all those who study French are angels in their former life time

I am suddenly motivated to stop ignoring my French homework.
Pas vraiment.

[Jashan]

Re: telephone numbers

I hate it when people say any group of digits, even in an American phone number, as a single number. I.e. the say "one thousand" instead of "one-zero-zero-zero" or they say "twelve" instead of "one-two".

The telephone number "918-340-1200" is nine-one-eight (pause) three-four-zero (pause) one-two-oh-oh (or zero-zero). Not 918 "three hundred forty" or "thirty-four zero", not anything "twelve-hundred".

meh.

[Chargone]

in New Zealand the phone numbers are written as (0X) xxx-xxxx, unless it's a mobile number in which case it's (02X) xxx-xxxx. or a number where you're going to get billed extra per minute for the service, or the business at the other end will pay for it, which is 0X00 XXX XXX or 0X00 XX XX XX. (that said, it's becoming quite common to write mobile numbers as 02XXXXXXXX)

also, if you're making an international call, the 0 at the start gets replaced with the number for the country in question (+64 for NZ, from memory, but check before using it.)

when you read the number out, though, you read it off as a string of digits, zero is said 'oh', and when two numbers in a row are the same digit it is replaced with 'double X'. you also pause at the punctuation marks. it's debateable if three identical digits should be 'triple X' , 'X double X' or 'double X X', unless it crosses a punctuation mark (or space) in which case you treat the bits on either side seperately. so (01) 234-5678 would be 'oh one, two three four, five six seven eight' while (027) 399-8339 (random mobile number) would be 'oh two seven, three double nine, eight double three nine', though 0800 101 101 is 'oh eight hundred, one oh one, one oh one' (and 0900 is 'oh nine hundred' if it is in that first part. it'd still be 'oh nine double oh, or possibly zero nine double oh for clarity, if it showed up in the last four digits of a standard number though.)

the (0X) is if you're calling outside of whatever the level is where it no longer counts as local, and thus you'll have to pay for the call even from a residential landline (and thus is ALWAYS included if you call from a cellphone or business premises), the next three digits are the area code (if you move house within the area, your number gets shifted to the new house instead of you getting a new number ) and the last four are specific to your phone/line/thing.

[hwhatting]

In Russian, the normal way is giving telephone numbers in pairs. If the total of numbers is impair, you use hundreds. As an example, 12345 would be двенадцать триста сорок пять (twelve three-hundred-forty-five).