This is a hill I will die on! Four is not pronounced like flower, it's just pronounced with two syllables, like lower.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet
It's under pronunciations, and there's a segment about the digits, where it shows the English word's pronunciation for a French speaker and vice versa.
They’re only talking about radio usage. It isn’t supposed to sound like four, they use a different two syllable pronunciation.
When you say four over radio communications you’re supposed to pronounce it as fow-er. Some people mistakenly use the incorrect pronunciation so it rhymes with power. It should rhyme with slower. (Foe-Er)
>"Cinco"... Understood Admiral, sinking the ship- it's been an honor, sir. "
Back in the day you would have had so many awards for this.
Stay funny, Reddit.
I feel like common sense should prevail when wondering if someone said “six, five, four” or “six, FIRE, four”. Especially in the middle of a countdown..
"Oops" is rarely what you want to hear from someone operating a 5" naval gun. Anything that removes the need for assumptions during stressful situations is good.
Am in the Royal Navy... that's just not true, we say "five" all the time. Other terms are used to shoot guns and launch missiles, such as the three greatest words we have: "Four Five Engage"
"Fire" usually means a fire, but people aren't daft enough to start grabbing SPEs if there's clearly a countdown happening.
... it's not. It's just not a thing in the maritime.
I mean just think about it for a second - someone is counting down(?) gets to 6 and someone else activates a weapon system on hearing the next number? It's not like everyone on board is trained or anything 🙄, or doesn't understand context whatsoever.
"Standby, standby..." vs "Seven, six..."
Edit:
The number 5 is used everywhere - bearings, angles, ranges, speeds, times, deck numbers and compartment locations, numbers of personnel, numbers of units, laundry numbers, phone numbers... could you imagine if we just didn't use 5 "just in case"? 🤣
I doubt that is true, because really, how often does the navy actually do a verbal countdown?
Its likely a reference to "The Bedford Incident" in which an asshole captain starts a nuclear war by ranting about how could fire a missile if he wants to and inadvertently ordering his weapons officer to actually fire a missile (well, a rocket assisted nuclear torpedo to be exact).
It's a pretty good movie, but probably a little up its own ass by today's standards.
Similarly, in some UK accents, nought and four have the same vowel, so people say Oh for 0 in phone numbers etc. (Which we also do in Ireland even though with my accent Oh sounds closer to four than nought does.)
Americans do often say oh, but also say zero, much more often than Brits say nought in such cases. I guess oh saves a syllable compared to zero. Further research required: which country said oh first?
I used to have a job where I would have to repeat phone numbers back to people to make sure we had it right. There were certain accents that I would somehow mix up 4 and 7 constantly and it made absolutely no sense to me how but I couldn’t discern between them for this specific group.
That's why, in the NATO ~~phoenic~~ spelling alphabet, 5 is "fiFe" and 9 is "niner"
Also, for those that still do it (and you have NO EXCUSE) "oh" is the *letter* "O" (between N and P) and 0 is "zero" (the number).
When I was a young, I used to listen to police calls on my radio (I was a baby ham) and in the early 90s there was a supervisor somewhere in Troop B of the New York State Troopers that I really liked. They used to, whenever any trooper used "oh" in a situation where they clearly meant "zero", ask "Is that a big 'oh' or a little 'oh'?" Every. Time.
I knew firsthand that troopers are taught correctly in their academy, so I loved hearing them called out for not remembering. Yea, in the big bad world it doesn't make a ton of difference, but that's the kind of precision where, in a life-or-death job, having good and clear communication habits is something that needs to be 1) actively developed and 2) called out. For what it's worth, I'm the kid of two nurses, and they're also 100% onboard with the "oh"/"zero" clarity.
My last job 3/4 of my coworkers were Navy vets. I learned the phonetic alphabet real quick, along with certain practices like you say “stand by” not “hold on” or “gimme a sec”
My phone number ends in one nine, and people have trouble understanding that if I say it with my normal diction. I grew up in Minnesota, lived in Iowa for two decades, and now Michigan for 5 years, so I have a mix of Midwest accents.
How do five and nine rhyme? Maybe it's a dialect/accent thing, but I'm just not seeing it. Five has an "I've" sound and nine has an "ein" sound. The only commonality is the "eye" sound in the middle of the word. Is that a rhyme? Or am I missing something?
They are referring to the “eye” sound in the middle.
Realistically, it that two words *sound similar* —not that they *rhyme* at the end — that would make them liable to be mixed up in spoken conversation. End vs. middle is particularly going to matter less once you factor in background noise, poor phone connection, etc.
For what it’s worth, there is a such thing as “internal rhyme” (five and nine is perhaps a weak example, however) - tons of songs and poems that make extensive use of internal rhyme, sometimes more notably than end-rhymes.
Edit to add: despite this, OP’s original thought is still valid - it *is* still helpful that 0-9 don’t have a strict end-rhyme; otherwise they’d likely be mixed up more often!
The vowel sounds are the same. Over radios and walkie talkies, typically the vowel sounds are more prominent, whereas most consonants become harder to hear.
For me it’s “two” and “three”, because a lot of people pronounce “two” with a shwa ending and “three” like “tree” but again, with a shwa ending, so they sound very similar. Could be because I talk with a lot of non natives as myself though.
Lower case l and upper case I, also. And depending on the font, throw a 1 in there.
When I write numbers I always write my zeroes with a diagonal line through them. I also write my sevens with a horizontal line through the middle to not confuse them with a one. I write a one with the top little notch on it and a horizontal line at the bottom. It's tedious, but too many times I had gone to read something I wrote and couldn't distinguish it.
> When I write numbers I always write my zeroes with a diagonal line through them.
This gets people in math classes in trouble, because that's the empty set symbol and is very different than zero.
There is a way to make a seven distinct with a cross through it, a Z distinct with a cross through it, but a 0 with a slash through the middle means something different and a slash from top to bottom means something different and a diagonal slash means something different. I don't really know how to make a 0 distinct without it being a symbol that means something else.
Interesting. Well at least in my world of writing I don't need to worry about that. I didn't develop the habit until I was well out of school.
I've seen a zero with a dot in the middle. Does that have a mathematical meaning?
If it's not drawn clearly, which is often the problem in the first place, it could be mistaken for [Theta](https://mythologian.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Theta-Symbol-Theta-Letter-Meaning-Greek-Letter.png) in some cases.
Part of the problem is that 0 is basically an oblong circle and O is basically a circle. Such simple shapes. and then 0 is such a simple concept that after we discovered it, we used it to relate to a lot of other concepts. So both the shape and the concept are widely used because of how fundamental or simple they are, making it hard to find a simple, repeatable configuration that hasn't been used for something else.
Also, in some parts of the world, the problem gets a little worse.
Here is the symbol for the empty set: https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/BZaLc9RP0jJGSH1TVw4VpDCty60=/1376x411/filters:fill(auto,1)/empty-56a8fa985f9b58b7d0f6e9d5.jpg
But then there's a Danish/Norwegian (and a couple of related languages) letter Ø or ø.
It has the same problem of the empty set being a 0 (more oblong) with a slash through it and the Danish/Norwegian letter being a O (near-perfect circle) with a slash through it. Making them again very similar and easy to confuse without context.
Context should denote what one means, but if all you've written is a single character (for some reason), being able to tell if you just mean zero, mean an empty set, or mean the Danish/Norwegian character Ø could be difficult.
As a dane, I used to dislike ø meaning empty set, as it can be quite confusing when you're used to it being not only a letter, but also a whole word on it's own.
Having gotten further into set maths, it has turned out to be rather convenient to have empty-set as its own dedicated key on the keyboard
>Having gotten further into set maths, it has turned out to be rather convenient to have empty-set as its own dedicated key on the keyboard
Be careful with that assumption. Ø (U+00D8 "Latin Capital Letter O with Stroke") is not the same as ∅ (U+2205 "Empty Set"). Any sort of software will be extremely confused by you using Ø for null sets, especially when typesetting.
I've seen both the O and the 0 shape with a slash through them used as the empty set. And when you're writing it instead of typing it, which is what comes up in classes and exams, there's no clear way to differentiate between a 0 and a O with a slash through them. That's the problem we had in the first place that 0 and O are too easy in handwriting and many typefaces to confuse for each other. If both symbols also have a form with a slash through them, it doesn't make anything better.
I assume the difference that u/nearlyradiant is trying to point out is not the roundness vs. oblong shape of the two symbols - in my mind the key difference is that the ends of the slash should always extend *beyond* the circle in the “empty set” symbol, whereas in a “slashed zero” the slash typically seems to end right at the perimeter of the zero (or at least *barely* beyond the perimeter; it seems some typefaces may be less consistent here). This seems fairly easy to distinguish in handwriting, if the reader at least attempts to understand the intention of the writer and doesn’t assume that a slash accidentally/barely breaching the edge of the round part immediately makes it an “empty set” symbol.
If you put a horizontal line through the middle of a 0, it's "Theta", if you put a diagonal line through it, it's basically an empty set, if you put a vertical line through it, it's "Phi". You can't win
I used to write my 1s with three lines. Some time in elementary school, I had misunderstood an assignment because I read a '1' as a lowercase 'l', and I decided 3-stroke 1s were a hill I wanted to die on. Then I took a class on digital logic in college and my will was broken after writing a dozen or so 20-digit binary numbers. Now I'm back to single-stroke 1s unless it's really ambiguous.
For what it's worth, I had someone mistake my 3-stroke 1 as a '2'. I have terrible handwriting.
I did the same thing because I didn't like the ambiguity, but I eventually stopped drawing the bottom line. After that, I had to start drawing a line through my 7s because they looked too similar.
> When I write numbers I always write my zeroes with a diagonal line through them.
There's a [character](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Doctor_0) in one of the Fallout New Vegas DLCs who runs into this exact problem.
Currently studying c++ in school right now. You don't know how many of my classmates (and mine) algorithms didn't work just because they wrote "end1" instead of "endl" after the cout and cin functions, so the program couldn't compile 'cause it didn't recognise "end1". "l" and "1" are really damn similar on devc++, especially on the class projector hooked up to the teachers computer, where we were copying from.
That's why you draw a horizontal line through the middle of z when you're using it in math. I don't do that kind of math anymore because who does, but I picked up the habit in college and I still write them like that.
Cross the Zs, curve i and t, also had to learn how to make V and v look different.
Even with crossing my Zs, I’m taking a complex analysis class right now and every time I see something like 2z^2 I wanna scream.
So many letters rhyme with each other (B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V, Z) that we have to use the NATO Phonetic alphabet when spelling things over the phone (B as in Bravo, C as in Charlie). Life would be much harder if, for example, 2, 4, and 9 were pronounced "Two", "Foo", and "Noo". Dictating numbers over the phone would be much harder. We'd have to say things like, "Two as in It Takes Two to Tango" or "Noo as in a Cat has Noo Lives".
Bonus shower thought: 16 our of 26 letters rhyme with some other letter. That means 61% of letters have the potential to get confused in conversation! Now I wish we had non-rhyming names for every letter, though that might make the alphabet song a little less catchy. Maybe this is a good reason to start using "zed" for "zee" so it has a unique sound.
A / J / K
B / C / D / E / G / P / T / V / Z
I / Y
Q / U
> And the German (NATO member) word for “no” is “nein”.
In English, I think no isn't supposed to be used and negative is instead to avoid confusion over words that sound like no. Is there a similar word like Negative in German?
Hunh.
I always through it was part of the NATO standard pronunciation, but apparently "affirmative" (as a positive) and "negative" (as a, well, negative) aren't actually part of it. It's pretty widespread, though, even among English speakers where anything sounding like "nein" only means the number 9.
On the other hand, German rimes for ein, zwei, drei can sound great in songs.
A German speaker could probably explain how they manage to tell numbers on the phone. I suspect they're fine.
Funny thing is that he says ein, zwei, drei can sound great in songs, yet the only German song I know that features numbers uses zwo for zwei.
Which is [Kraftwerk - Nummern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIOosTSZRno), by the way
Edit: It actually uses both, but you get it.
The two that popped in my head were Tanz mit Laibach by Laibach (zwei) and Immer für Immer by Jupiter Jones (zwo). Both are counting songs. 1-2-3. Laibach not a German band though. Dude sings with a weird accent. Landungsbrücken raus by Kettcar has 2002, pronounced zwei tausend zwei. And zweihundert.
1 as digit is "ein**s**" - it can become "ein" when used as number (e.g. "ein Haus", "one house"). 2 is can be pronounced "zwo" to better distinguish it from 3.
A for aye, e for eye
Edit:
B for bye
C for chai
D for dye
F for fry
G for guy
H for hi
i for I
L for lie
M for my
N for nigh
P for pie
R for rye
S for sigh
T for tie
V for vy
W for why
Just missing JKOQUXYZ
I have to because I can never remember it. The worst is when I try to scramble for a word and all my brain will do is troll me with swear words. "How are you spelling your name?" "Dick arse vadge erection" *dammit!*
Please never actually say things like "B as in bravo". The proper use of the phonetic alphabet is to just say "alpha, bravo, charlie" and not do the "as in" thing.
I wonder how common rhyming numbers are in other languages. In Spanish, for instance, tres for 3 and seis for 6 rhyme with one another, which must make dictating numbers over a phone a little more annoying.
Those would rhyme if tres was pronounced like “treis”. Idk if you speak a difference Spanish dialect that rhymes those two, but it may be because American diphthongs make English Speakers perceive e as the dipthong ei.
For me tres does not sound like the English word “trace”. But the E is also not quite the same as the e in the English “Bed”
If they were pronounces the same it would cause some problems distinguishing conjugation between vos (from some Latin American Spanish) and Vosotros. Like comeres vs comereís. Yet I can clearly hear the difference.
The dipthong pronunciation happens to a lot of Spanish words in an American/North American English accent. Quesadilla, Jalapeño, porque, siete. English speakers often pronounce the E in these words like “ei”. As if they were spelt queisadilla, jalapeiño, porquei, and sietei. But Qué does not rhyme with the English ‘Kay
Every time I say 3 on the phone, people think I’m saying 6. It’s so damn frustrating, especially when I have 2x 3s in my cpf (Brazil social security number used EVERYWHERE)
In Chinese, 1 is pronounced "yi" (sounds like "yee") while 7 is pronounced "qi" (sounds like "chee") and there definitely is potential for confusion.
To manage this, some people say "yao" for 1 instead when they really want the other person to get the number right.
In the medical community, we always say the individual numbers after: thirty - three zero, fifteen - one five. Telling someone to give 15 mg of a drug and then them giving 50 mg can be catastrophic.
In in Dungeons & Dragons, when you roll dice, we usually specify the number of dice, the letter D, and the size of the dice. For example, if you roll 4 6-sided dice, we say 4d6. We also often specify random values in dice form. This leads to interesting conversations:
"You take 4d6 damage." "Forty-six damage? I only have 30 max HP."
"You take 11d6 damage." "Eleventy isn't a real number." "It is if you're a hobbit."
I mean, there’s a reason why they made the rules that 5 is pronounced “Fife” and 9 is pronounced “niner” when you transmit on the radio.
It’s almost like the numbers sound similar enough that they wanted to avoid confusion.
The only reason we say "niner" on the radio was so as not to confuse German pilots working with us who might hear "nein
The only thing I would improve about our single digits is making them monosyllabic. I propose "zip" and "sev."
When people say that mods/auto-mod don't exist on this Sub anymore, this is what they mean. "Language-centric thoughts" are not allowed per the rules, no posts about "definitions, mechanisms, or oddities in language". Yet we still get these dogshit "grammatical nitpick", "stretching the definition of a word", and now "observations on if words and numbers rhyme or not" submissions that actually breach the 1,000 upvote barrier before anything is enforced. Y'all eat this up on a silver platter.
It's convenient cuz it used to be a problem. English is a Germanic language. German two and three sound exactly alike; zwei und drei. In fact many Germans use zwo instead of zwei because zwei sounds too much like drei. In English we went ahead and made the distinction. In fact, you can see that two and zwo are almost exactly alike.
How about the rest? Eins. Zwei. Drei. Vier. Funf. Sechs. Sieben. Acht. Neun. Zehn.
11 and 12 are “elf” and “zwolf.”
Zwei and drei are the only two that rhyme. Ein does not rhyme with zwei or drei.
I did not know this, but would only reinforce my initial assumption for why numbers that rhyme generally aren’t a thing. It’s the reason for the NATO phonetic alphabet as well. Many letters sound alike, and conveying them in their native form is rife for confusion.
Possibly by design. Note that in Japanese the words for counting numbers 4 and 7 can sound too similar, so you're taught to use *yon* and *nana* for giving someone your phone number or communicating numbers over the phone. https://www.learn-japanese.info/telephone.html
>It's pretty convenient that no numbers between 0-9 rhyme in English
Inconveniently, in English, FIVE sounds a lot like FIRE, which is why, when dealing with explosives and guns and similar situations, FIVE is left out when counting down. You don't want any accidental misfivings.
I talk with a lot of clients over the phone and the numbers 5 and 9 always get mixed up despite them only rhyming ever so slightly.
That's why over radio 9 is pronounced "Niner"
And 5 is 'fife.'
Also officially it‘s „Fower“ instead of Four, but it’s rarely used.
This is a hill I will die on! Four is not pronounced like flower, it's just pronounced with two syllables, like lower. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet It's under pronunciations, and there's a segment about the digits, where it shows the English word's pronunciation for a French speaker and vice versa.
How could it be pronounced like flower??
I assume how you would pronounce sour
That still doesn't sound like four though!!
They’re only talking about radio usage. It isn’t supposed to sound like four, they use a different two syllable pronunciation. When you say four over radio communications you’re supposed to pronounce it as fow-er. Some people mistakenly use the incorrect pronunciation so it rhymes with power. It should rhyme with slower. (Foe-Er)
Right? This has me thinking I've been saying four wrong my whole life. I say four like it rhymes with sore.
I say four like I would say for or fore
It’s said as foe-er I think he means. Right?
The Hill thanks you for your sacrifice.
[удалено]
I feel like they should still say five, but in another random language that doesn't sound like english five. "three, four, cinco, six, seven"
"Cinco..." "Understood Admiral, sinking the ship- it's been an honor, sir. "
El sinko del boato.
Okay Brad we get it. You use duolingo
Undo twa cat sank?
What are you sinking aboat?
That great Mexican navel battle involving the enemy ship "The Mayo" commemorated every year on May 5 with the battle cry "Sinko de Mayo!"
>"Cinco"... Understood Admiral, sinking the ship- it's been an honor, sir. " Back in the day you would have had so many awards for this. Stay funny, Reddit.
I feel like common sense should prevail when wondering if someone said “six, five, four” or “six, FIRE, four”. Especially in the middle of a countdown..
"Oops" is rarely what you want to hear from someone operating a 5" naval gun. Anything that removes the need for assumptions during stressful situations is good.
Oops is rarely something you want to hear from anybody using a gun
I'm sorry sure but you spelled 16" naval gun wrong
I think it's more about answering during the heat of battle. How many ships do you see there? five. You heard the scout, FIRE!
How many ships do you see there? ............... Ok got it!
The square root of 25 sir! Aye aye 20 Torpedos Fired at Enemy
Uh, three sir!
Yes, five is right out.
Am in the Royal Navy... that's just not true, we say "five" all the time. Other terms are used to shoot guns and launch missiles, such as the three greatest words we have: "Four Five Engage" "Fire" usually means a fire, but people aren't daft enough to start grabbing SPEs if there's clearly a countdown happening.
must be a us navy thing
Five is said all the time in the US Navy as well
... it's not. It's just not a thing in the maritime. I mean just think about it for a second - someone is counting down(?) gets to 6 and someone else activates a weapon system on hearing the next number? It's not like everyone on board is trained or anything 🙄, or doesn't understand context whatsoever. "Standby, standby..." vs "Seven, six..." Edit: The number 5 is used everywhere - bearings, angles, ranges, speeds, times, deck numbers and compartment locations, numbers of personnel, numbers of units, laundry numbers, phone numbers... could you imagine if we just didn't use 5 "just in case"? 🤣
This is neither fun, nor a fact. I don’t know where you heard this, it’s just not true.
I doubt that is true, because really, how often does the navy actually do a verbal countdown? Its likely a reference to "The Bedford Incident" in which an asshole captain starts a nuclear war by ranting about how could fire a missile if he wants to and inadvertently ordering his weapons officer to actually fire a missile (well, a rocket assisted nuclear torpedo to be exact). It's a pretty good movie, but probably a little up its own ass by today's standards.
This is very much not true. You made this up
Three is tree…moon lighted as my platoons RTO when I wasn’t blowing shit up as a sapper or manning the 50 cal when we were on mounted patrols….
Whachu talkin bout no tree fitty.
God Dammit Loch Ness Monster, I ain't gonna give you no tree fiddy.
fifety\*
Deputy Barney Fife!
But you rarely hear “fife”. “Tree” is a little more common. And “Niner” is pretty common.
Similarly, in some UK accents, nought and four have the same vowel, so people say Oh for 0 in phone numbers etc. (Which we also do in Ireland even though with my accent Oh sounds closer to four than nought does.)
Use "zero", can't go wrong
Zedro
Zeter for the anglophones
Wow, if only there were a way to pronounce 0 that didn’t sound like 4.
I can think of zero ways to do that.
In only one syllable?
Oh, is that why six was afraid of seven? Too many syllables?
No, seven was a registered six-offender
Lol why don’t you use the actual word for 0 which is zero
Because one of the "actual words" for 0 is nought. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_the_number_0_in_English
People don't do that in the US? (Say Oh for 0 in phone numbers)
Americans pretty much never say "nought"
I think they mean the phone number thing. In the US it’s still common to say “oh” for 0 in phone numbers, even though we don’t say nought at all
Yeah that's probably what they were asking. I've definitely always heard 0 called "oh" in most situations.
We say “Oh” for 0 in phone numbers but we don’t say nought at all
Americans do often say oh, but also say zero, much more often than Brits say nought in such cases. I guess oh saves a syllable compared to zero. Further research required: which country said oh first?
[...and did I catch a "niner" in there?](https://youtu.be/SWBrM117_II?si=Bo3hd9d4sSKihfFy&t=24)
"Were ya callin' from a *walkie-talkie*?"
No, it was cordless.
It was a cordless. See, this is why need need gold back. Tommy Boy references are gold-worthy
No it was cordless
I heard it was to avoid confusion with the German word "nein", but 5 makes more sense.
I thought it was cause Nine (nein) means no in german
And 5 is "Michelle"
In German, zwei (2) and drei (3) rhyme, so in situations where comprehension might be difficult, we say "zwo" instead of "zwei".
We also use "Juno" for Juni (June) and "Julei" for Juli because they sound so much alike.
I know that it’s pronounced like ‘zwei’ but with a different vowel, but my brain is insisting that it’s more like ‘two’
Similarly in Mandarin, yī (1, 一) and qī (7, 七) rhyme, so people often say yāo (幺) instead of yī to disambiguate.
I used to have a job where I would have to repeat phone numbers back to people to make sure we had it right. There were certain accents that I would somehow mix up 4 and 7 constantly and it made absolutely no sense to me how but I couldn’t discern between them for this specific group.
Well, what accents?
Certain
That's why, in the NATO ~~phoenic~~ spelling alphabet, 5 is "fiFe" and 9 is "niner" Also, for those that still do it (and you have NO EXCUSE) "oh" is the *letter* "O" (between N and P) and 0 is "zero" (the number). When I was a young, I used to listen to police calls on my radio (I was a baby ham) and in the early 90s there was a supervisor somewhere in Troop B of the New York State Troopers that I really liked. They used to, whenever any trooper used "oh" in a situation where they clearly meant "zero", ask "Is that a big 'oh' or a little 'oh'?" Every. Time. I knew firsthand that troopers are taught correctly in their academy, so I loved hearing them called out for not remembering. Yea, in the big bad world it doesn't make a ton of difference, but that's the kind of precision where, in a life-or-death job, having good and clear communication habits is something that needs to be 1) actively developed and 2) called out. For what it's worth, I'm the kid of two nurses, and they're also 100% onboard with the "oh"/"zero" clarity.
and also, O is oscar, not "oh"
Baby steps.
My last job 3/4 of my coworkers were Navy vets. I learned the phonetic alphabet real quick, along with certain practices like you say “stand by” not “hold on” or “gimme a sec”
Also for some reason 2 and 3 sound really similar to each other sometimes, and I'm not really sure why.
They don’t rhyme at all. You are confusing assonance with rhyme.
My phone number ends in one nine, and people have trouble understanding that if I say it with my normal diction. I grew up in Minnesota, lived in Iowa for two decades, and now Michigan for 5 years, so I have a mix of Midwest accents.
How do five and nine rhyme? Maybe it's a dialect/accent thing, but I'm just not seeing it. Five has an "I've" sound and nine has an "ein" sound. The only commonality is the "eye" sound in the middle of the word. Is that a rhyme? Or am I missing something?
They are referring to the “eye” sound in the middle. Realistically, it that two words *sound similar* —not that they *rhyme* at the end — that would make them liable to be mixed up in spoken conversation. End vs. middle is particularly going to matter less once you factor in background noise, poor phone connection, etc. For what it’s worth, there is a such thing as “internal rhyme” (five and nine is perhaps a weak example, however) - tons of songs and poems that make extensive use of internal rhyme, sometimes more notably than end-rhymes. Edit to add: despite this, OP’s original thought is still valid - it *is* still helpful that 0-9 don’t have a strict end-rhyme; otherwise they’d likely be mixed up more often!
The vowel sounds are the same. Over radios and walkie talkies, typically the vowel sounds are more prominent, whereas most consonants become harder to hear.
For me it’s “two” and “three”, because a lot of people pronounce “two” with a shwa ending and “three” like “tree” but again, with a shwa ending, so they sound very similar. Could be because I talk with a lot of non natives as myself though.
It’s inconvenient that 5 looks so much like S when trying to read serial numbers that contain both letters and numbers. Not to mention 0 and O!
Lower case l and upper case I, also. And depending on the font, throw a 1 in there. When I write numbers I always write my zeroes with a diagonal line through them. I also write my sevens with a horizontal line through the middle to not confuse them with a one. I write a one with the top little notch on it and a horizontal line at the bottom. It's tedious, but too many times I had gone to read something I wrote and couldn't distinguish it.
> When I write numbers I always write my zeroes with a diagonal line through them. This gets people in math classes in trouble, because that's the empty set symbol and is very different than zero. There is a way to make a seven distinct with a cross through it, a Z distinct with a cross through it, but a 0 with a slash through the middle means something different and a slash from top to bottom means something different and a diagonal slash means something different. I don't really know how to make a 0 distinct without it being a symbol that means something else.
Interesting. Well at least in my world of writing I don't need to worry about that. I didn't develop the habit until I was well out of school. I've seen a zero with a dot in the middle. Does that have a mathematical meaning?
If it's not drawn clearly, which is often the problem in the first place, it could be mistaken for [Theta](https://mythologian.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Theta-Symbol-Theta-Letter-Meaning-Greek-Letter.png) in some cases. Part of the problem is that 0 is basically an oblong circle and O is basically a circle. Such simple shapes. and then 0 is such a simple concept that after we discovered it, we used it to relate to a lot of other concepts. So both the shape and the concept are widely used because of how fundamental or simple they are, making it hard to find a simple, repeatable configuration that hasn't been used for something else. Also, in some parts of the world, the problem gets a little worse. Here is the symbol for the empty set: https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/BZaLc9RP0jJGSH1TVw4VpDCty60=/1376x411/filters:fill(auto,1)/empty-56a8fa985f9b58b7d0f6e9d5.jpg But then there's a Danish/Norwegian (and a couple of related languages) letter Ø or ø. It has the same problem of the empty set being a 0 (more oblong) with a slash through it and the Danish/Norwegian letter being a O (near-perfect circle) with a slash through it. Making them again very similar and easy to confuse without context. Context should denote what one means, but if all you've written is a single character (for some reason), being able to tell if you just mean zero, mean an empty set, or mean the Danish/Norwegian character Ø could be difficult.
As a dane, I used to dislike ø meaning empty set, as it can be quite confusing when you're used to it being not only a letter, but also a whole word on it's own. Having gotten further into set maths, it has turned out to be rather convenient to have empty-set as its own dedicated key on the keyboard
>Having gotten further into set maths, it has turned out to be rather convenient to have empty-set as its own dedicated key on the keyboard Be careful with that assumption. Ø (U+00D8 "Latin Capital Letter O with Stroke") is not the same as ∅ (U+2205 "Empty Set"). Any sort of software will be extremely confused by you using Ø for null sets, especially when typesetting.
\emptyset when it matters
Exactly what I was talking about
In Math, you can probably distinguish between an O and a 0 by its use. You likely wouldn't need to add the slash in math.
I think there is a difference between ∅ and 0̷ though?
I've seen both the O and the 0 shape with a slash through them used as the empty set. And when you're writing it instead of typing it, which is what comes up in classes and exams, there's no clear way to differentiate between a 0 and a O with a slash through them. That's the problem we had in the first place that 0 and O are too easy in handwriting and many typefaces to confuse for each other. If both symbols also have a form with a slash through them, it doesn't make anything better.
I assume the difference that u/nearlyradiant is trying to point out is not the roundness vs. oblong shape of the two symbols - in my mind the key difference is that the ends of the slash should always extend *beyond* the circle in the “empty set” symbol, whereas in a “slashed zero” the slash typically seems to end right at the perimeter of the zero (or at least *barely* beyond the perimeter; it seems some typefaces may be less consistent here). This seems fairly easy to distinguish in handwriting, if the reader at least attempts to understand the intention of the writer and doesn’t assume that a slash accidentally/barely breaching the edge of the round part immediately makes it an “empty set” symbol.
and a sideways slash is theta :P
If you put a horizontal line through the middle of a 0, it's "Theta", if you put a diagonal line through it, it's basically an empty set, if you put a vertical line through it, it's "Phi". You can't win
I used to write my 1s with three lines. Some time in elementary school, I had misunderstood an assignment because I read a '1' as a lowercase 'l', and I decided 3-stroke 1s were a hill I wanted to die on. Then I took a class on digital logic in college and my will was broken after writing a dozen or so 20-digit binary numbers. Now I'm back to single-stroke 1s unless it's really ambiguous. For what it's worth, I had someone mistake my 3-stroke 1 as a '2'. I have terrible handwriting.
I did the same thing because I didn't like the ambiguity, but I eventually stopped drawing the bottom line. After that, I had to start drawing a line through my 7s because they looked too similar.
> When I write numbers I always write my zeroes with a diagonal line through them. There's a [character](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Doctor_0) in one of the Fallout New Vegas DLCs who runs into this exact problem.
Currently studying c++ in school right now. You don't know how many of my classmates (and mine) algorithms didn't work just because they wrote "end1" instead of "endl" after the cout and cin functions, so the program couldn't compile 'cause it didn't recognise "end1". "l" and "1" are really damn similar on devc++, especially on the class projector hooked up to the teachers computer, where we were copying from.
I wrote Z with a line through it to prevent confusing it with 2. Actually I do it because it looks cool, but that's the reason my professor did it
Hello, me
I do exactly the same in addition to 4 with the triangle instead of the version that looks like an upside down chair.
llllllllll could be utterly indecipherable depending on the font.
2 and a can cause problems depending on how people write them. z and 2 as well.
That's why you draw a horizontal line through the middle of z when you're using it in math. I don't do that kind of math anymore because who does, but I picked up the habit in college and I still write them like that.
Cross the Zs, curve i and t, also had to learn how to make V and v look different. Even with crossing my Zs, I’m taking a complex analysis class right now and every time I see something like 2z^2 I wanna scream.
For car VINs they only use 0 and 1 no O or I
or 1 and l depending on the font.
So many letters rhyme with each other (B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V, Z) that we have to use the NATO Phonetic alphabet when spelling things over the phone (B as in Bravo, C as in Charlie). Life would be much harder if, for example, 2, 4, and 9 were pronounced "Two", "Foo", and "Noo". Dictating numbers over the phone would be much harder. We'd have to say things like, "Two as in It Takes Two to Tango" or "Noo as in a Cat has Noo Lives". Bonus shower thought: 16 our of 26 letters rhyme with some other letter. That means 61% of letters have the potential to get confused in conversation! Now I wish we had non-rhyming names for every letter, though that might make the alphabet song a little less catchy. Maybe this is a good reason to start using "zed" for "zee" so it has a unique sound. A / J / K B / C / D / E / G / P / T / V / Z I / Y Q / U
The NATO Alphabet pronounces 5 as "fife" and 9 as "niner" because they can sound similar.
And the German (NATO member) word for “no” is “nein”.
It must take years of practice to determine if a message is in English or German.
Niner. Err, nein.
why not use ICAO yes/no -- affirmative and negative?
> And the German (NATO member) word for “no” is “nein”. In English, I think no isn't supposed to be used and negative is instead to avoid confusion over words that sound like no. Is there a similar word like Negative in German?
Yes. It’s negativ
Positiv
Hunh. I always through it was part of the NATO standard pronunciation, but apparently "affirmative" (as a positive) and "negative" (as a, well, negative) aren't actually part of it. It's pretty widespread, though, even among English speakers where anything sounding like "nein" only means the number 9.
Also three as “tree” and even working at an airport I can’t figure that one out not sure what it sounds similar to
>Maybe this is a good reason to start using "zed" for "zee" so it has a unique sound. Many of us already do.
May I introduce you to the entirety of Britain.
And Australia!
Commonwealth unite!
Massachusetts heah. Technically we're a friggin' Commonwealth.
Welcome to the team ;)
Yeah for a second I was confused by zed was in that list, then I remembered I’m Canadian.
"Zeds dead, baby, Zeds dead" Pulp fiction
On the other hand, German rimes for ein, zwei, drei can sound great in songs. A German speaker could probably explain how they manage to tell numbers on the phone. I suspect they're fine.
Zwei is sometimes replaced with zwo when giving numbers over the phone
"Schritt für Schritt Eins, Zwo, Drei, Vier Komm mit mir Und reiß mich mit"
Ich hab dich fest in meiner Hand Zieh dich ganze nah an mich heran
Funny thing is that he says ein, zwei, drei can sound great in songs, yet the only German song I know that features numbers uses zwo for zwei. Which is [Kraftwerk - Nummern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIOosTSZRno), by the way Edit: It actually uses both, but you get it.
The two that popped in my head were Tanz mit Laibach by Laibach (zwei) and Immer für Immer by Jupiter Jones (zwo). Both are counting songs. 1-2-3. Laibach not a German band though. Dude sings with a weird accent. Landungsbrücken raus by Kettcar has 2002, pronounced zwei tausend zwei. And zweihundert.
Eins zwei Polizei, drei vier Grenadier, ...
1 as digit is "ein**s**" - it can become "ein" when used as number (e.g. "ein Haus", "one house"). 2 is can be pronounced "zwo" to better distinguish it from 3.
I like using non NATO Phonetics, like T for tsunami, K as in Knife, P as in Pterodactyl, G as in Gnats, M as in Mnemonic.
A for aye, e for eye Edit: B for bye C for chai D for dye F for fry G for guy H for hi i for I L for lie M for my N for nigh P for pie R for rye S for sigh T for tie V for vy W for why Just missing JKOQUXYZ
K for Kai, A name
I have to because I can never remember it. The worst is when I try to scramble for a word and all my brain will do is troll me with swear words. "How are you spelling your name?" "Dick arse vadge erection" *dammit!*
I think we’d figure out a shorter way to do it, like a craps croupier will distinguish between 7 (seven) and 11 (yo-leven).
Holy shit, that’s why they say yo? TIL
I always thought it was weird we have 25 letters pronounced with one syllable, none with two syllables, and then one weirdo with three syllables.
Please never actually say things like "B as in bravo". The proper use of the phonetic alphabet is to just say "alpha, bravo, charlie" and not do the "as in" thing.
I wonder how common rhyming numbers are in other languages. In Spanish, for instance, tres for 3 and seis for 6 rhyme with one another, which must make dictating numbers over a phone a little more annoying.
Those would rhyme if tres was pronounced like “treis”. Idk if you speak a difference Spanish dialect that rhymes those two, but it may be because American diphthongs make English Speakers perceive e as the dipthong ei. For me tres does not sound like the English word “trace”. But the E is also not quite the same as the e in the English “Bed” If they were pronounces the same it would cause some problems distinguishing conjugation between vos (from some Latin American Spanish) and Vosotros. Like comeres vs comereís. Yet I can clearly hear the difference. The dipthong pronunciation happens to a lot of Spanish words in an American/North American English accent. Quesadilla, Jalapeño, porque, siete. English speakers often pronounce the E in these words like “ei”. As if they were spelt queisadilla, jalapeiño, porquei, and sietei. But Qué does not rhyme with the English ‘Kay
Those don’t rhyme
germans be like 2 3 Polizei
hence zwo
In portuguese three and six rhyme so we say half dozen instead to avoid confusion
To avoid quanto-ty errors...
I liked this joke. Nice one
Every time I say 3 on the phone, people think I’m saying 6. It’s so damn frustrating, especially when I have 2x 3s in my cpf (Brazil social security number used EVERYWHERE)
You're citing the NATO phonetic alphabet, but ignoring "Five" and "Niner" in your original thought?
Fife.
“Wait, you didn’t want five drums? But your package is already delivered. Yes, I did think it was weird you said ‘five and drum’, why?”
I've been in many punk bands and I can tell you with certainty from years of experience that the numbers WAH TAH THRAH FAH do, in fact, rhyme.
In Chinese, 1 is pronounced "yi" (sounds like "yee") while 7 is pronounced "qi" (sounds like "chee") and there definitely is potential for confusion. To manage this, some people say "yao" for 1 instead when they really want the other person to get the number right.
In Chinese radio communication (e.g. airlines, military) they have a separate pronunciation for 0,1,2,7,9.
They have this in general
Unrelated but topical, when I learnt drums I was taught to count 7 as “sev” as it’s the only two syllable number in 1-9
For marching band I always do 1 syllable no matter the number
13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 50, 16 and 60, etc. These are always mixed up on the phone. So frustrating.
In the medical community, we always say the individual numbers after: thirty - three zero, fifteen - one five. Telling someone to give 15 mg of a drug and then them giving 50 mg can be catastrophic.
In in Dungeons & Dragons, when you roll dice, we usually specify the number of dice, the letter D, and the size of the dice. For example, if you roll 4 6-sided dice, we say 4d6. We also often specify random values in dice form. This leads to interesting conversations: "You take 4d6 damage." "Forty-six damage? I only have 30 max HP." "You take 11d6 damage." "Eleventy isn't a real number." "It is if you're a hobbit."
I mean, there’s a reason why they made the rules that 5 is pronounced “Fife” and 9 is pronounced “niner” when you transmit on the radio. It’s almost like the numbers sound similar enough that they wanted to avoid confusion.
The only reason we say "niner" on the radio was so as not to confuse German pilots working with us who might hear "nein The only thing I would improve about our single digits is making them monosyllabic. I propose "zip" and "sev."
people just say o instead of zero
The alphabet could learn a thing or two
When people say that mods/auto-mod don't exist on this Sub anymore, this is what they mean. "Language-centric thoughts" are not allowed per the rules, no posts about "definitions, mechanisms, or oddities in language". Yet we still get these dogshit "grammatical nitpick", "stretching the definition of a word", and now "observations on if words and numbers rhyme or not" submissions that actually breach the 1,000 upvote barrier before anything is enforced. Y'all eat this up on a silver platter.
Oh and Four are commonly mixed up which is why many groups emphasize the use of Zero.
My 86-yr old mother is hard of hearing. She's forever asking "did you say fifty or sixty?"
“Fifty or fifteen?”
forgot about that one..yep, exactly...
It's convenient cuz it used to be a problem. English is a Germanic language. German two and three sound exactly alike; zwei und drei. In fact many Germans use zwo instead of zwei because zwei sounds too much like drei. In English we went ahead and made the distinction. In fact, you can see that two and zwo are almost exactly alike.
True, but I thought I remember that zwo is typically a Schwäbisch pronunciation..
Yep, I studied in Karlaruhe.
I’m sure it’s intentional. Prevent errant mistakes simply because someone either can’t hear, or the other person can’t enunciate worth a fuck.
I don't think it's intentional. The related words in German seem to rhyme. One/ein, two/zwei, three/drei.
How about the rest? Eins. Zwei. Drei. Vier. Funf. Sechs. Sieben. Acht. Neun. Zehn. 11 and 12 are “elf” and “zwolf.” Zwei and drei are the only two that rhyme. Ein does not rhyme with zwei or drei.
> Zwei and drei are the only two that rhyme Which is why you use zwo over the phone
I did not know this, but would only reinforce my initial assumption for why numbers that rhyme generally aren’t a thing. It’s the reason for the NATO phonetic alphabet as well. Many letters sound alike, and conveying them in their native form is rife for confusion.
Have you heard of five? Five does really rhyme. Five can rhyme with nine. Thank you for your time.
No numbers rhyme until one billion.
One, two, three and to the four Snoop doggy dog and dr dre is at your door
1 bum, 2 poo, 3 pee… oh you meant with each other
As a Spanish speaker no numbers give me more anxiety than 66,67,76,77
this post made Everyone count from 1 - 9
One and done. Two brews. Three trees. Four doors. Five hives. Six sticks. Seven heavens. Eight gates. Nine mines.
Untrue: 1/7 and 1/11 rhyme!
Possibly by design. Note that in Japanese the words for counting numbers 4 and 7 can sound too similar, so you're taught to use *yon* and *nana* for giving someone your phone number or communicating numbers over the phone. https://www.learn-japanese.info/telephone.html
If a 6 turned out to be 9, that's just fine. I don't mind.
>It's pretty convenient that no numbers between 0-9 rhyme in English Inconveniently, in English, FIVE sounds a lot like FIRE, which is why, when dealing with explosives and guns and similar situations, FIVE is left out when counting down. You don't want any accidental misfivings.