People with accents who say numbers wrong

The BBQ Pit
1

This is an extremely trivial rant, but I just wondered if other people notice this:

So I go into this pizza joint for a slice, and the cashier tells me the amount to pay, and she says, “tu-TWEN-ty five.” O.K. - got the ‘twenty-five’ part loud and clear, but was it TWO-twenty five, or THREE-twenty-five?

I ask her to repeat it: “Excuse me?”

“tu-TWEN-ty five.”

“I’m sorry, I still didn’t hear you.”

“tu-TWEN-ty five.”

I had to ask 3 times before I understood her. It didn’t help that loud music was blaring in the place, and that she turned away from me and mumbled every time, but there is a sort of informal convention that when we say numbers, we emphasize the important syllables.

One would normally say it like: “TWO twenty-FIVE”. It’s O.K. to swallow some syllables if you know the word from context. For example, if I sneeze and you mumble “Gezundheit”, I can figure out that you probably didn’t say “Your shoe’s untied”, since I just sneezed. Or if you say, “Pass the worsteshure sauce”, I’m gonna get that you want the Worchestershire sauce. But with numbers, you can’t swallow the vowel sounds. I’m sure if I asked the woman how many arms she has, she wouldn’t say “tu”; she would say “two”.

Another similar one that happened to me was with the number “thirteen”. It’s a flaw in English that thirteen/thirty, fourteen/forty, etc. sound similar, and we normally compensate for that by hammering the last syllable, e.g. “That’ll be five thirTEEN.” But this person said "That’ll be five THIRtin, and swallowed the last syllable so badly that there was no difference between how he said “thirteen” and “thirty”.

But I have to ask - If you say something, and the person you’re talking to doesn’t understand you, why would you continue to repeat it at exactly the same volume, in exactly the same way?

2

Whenever this happens to me, when I finally get what was said, I repeat it back to them like “Ohh, TWO twenty five!” Just to mockingly let them know that they were emphasising the wrong bit.

3

What’s worse than repeating it the same way at the same volume is when their response to your “huh” is to YELL it at you with the same unintelligible mumble.

4

Which reminds me instantly of a bit from simpsons. Homer says something uninteligable, Marge asks him to repeat it more slowly, he simply repeats exactly what he said but in slow motion. (“shudddaaafuddderraggerrrarrrafaarraaa”)

5

My year 9 (or year 8, can’t remember now) math teacher was a Filipino woman with a very strong accent. When she was teaching the class about surds I spent two lessons completely confused because I thought she was talking about “thirds”.

6

Once I was trying to say “forty” to somebody over the phone, so I said “forTYYYY” which completely defeated the purpose of making sure it wasn’t confused for “fourTEEN”. That was pretty stupid.

When applicable, I usually just list the digits of numbers to avoid this ambiguity. But then people always repeat back to me the “real” number. And not always to confirm the number back to me-- I think they’re showing off! :smiley:

7

I had a Spanish friend in England who was most distressed when someone who, while giving their phone number, used the words Treble-Naught.

8

In the same vein:

$2500 pronounced as “two-and-half-thousand dollars”
Gah! the horror!

9

And the reason you, rather than requesting the information in a helpful manner (e.g. “Did you say ‘two’?”) requested it in a manner that was perhaps guaranteed to frustrate you was…

And what the hell is a “surd”?

10

When I was studying urban sociology as an undergrad, I had an indian lecturer with a strong accent. I kept hearing the term ‘double upment’ - and thought it a new sociological term, until half way throught the course, a student leaned over and asked, what is ‘double upment’, and another student replied ‘development’ - to which half the class when ‘ooooooohhhhhhh’.

11

My college had a heavily-accented architecture professor who kept talking about “urban cows.” Most puzzling. It took everyone at least a lecture or two before they realized that he was talking about urban chaos.

12

I’d never run into that one either. In mathematics, it’s just another name for an irrational number, like the square root of two.

In linguistics, on the other hand, it’s a consonant produced without sound from the vocal cords (I’m thinking that would be like the “f” in “fat,” for example - the sound is produced solely by air rushing past your teeth - the vocal cords don’t start vibrating until you get to the “a” sound).

13

Wait a minute! This is The Pit! A linguistic surd is like the “f” in “Go fuck yourself, asshole!”

That feels much better. :smiley:

14

That’ll be tree-fiddy.

15

My wife always assumes that if you say “pardon?” it’s the last part of the sentence you didn’t hear

Her: “mumble mumble on Thursday”.

Me: “Pardon?”

Her: “I said, ‘on Thursday’”

Me: “No, repeat the whole of what you said”

Her: “I said on Thursday, are you going deaf?”

etc

16

Around here, the “eh” and “ih” sounds are nearly identical. The locals can differentiate between them just fine, but to me they seriously sound like the exact same vowel. People ask me for a pin or a pen, and I can’t tell which one they said, so I have to say “for writing or for poking?” and they think I’m an idiot. And even after a year I’m not conditioned to the number 10 sounding like what you make helmets out of, so somebody says they need tin of something and I get all confused.

17

My mom is a Filipina and my brother and I had a great time making fun of her accent. Pinoys tend to pronounce “F” as “P” and “V” as “B”. So if you were flying to Manila, the pilot announcement would sound something like:
“Welcome and thank you por plying Pilippine Airlines. We hab lebeled opp and are plying at an altitude op porty-pibe thousand peet.”

18

Oh, and my Irish husband pronounces “third” as “turd” and “thirty” as “turty.”

19

Never heard that term in linguistics class. My prof always called that a fricative.

Next time ask if they want a rotten one.

What always cracks me up is when people tell me they need “a ink pen.” What other kind of pen is there?

20

“I have been to Canada twyste.”

Twice=twyste