The US house numbering gets stranger but I understand the odds and evens, NSW has a policy - if only it were simple but I think the manual on address policy runs to nearly 200 pages, I only know this because I was once on a council reference group where this policy was needed. Broadly speaking streets number from east to west, south to north or from the main access point but they start at 1 with odd numbers on the left . In sparsely populated areas the address reflects the distance from a reference point.
PEnnsylvania 6-5000 is a telephone number in New York City, written in the 2L+5N (two letters, five numbers) format that was common from about 1930 into the 1960s. The number is best known from the 1940 hit song “Pennsylvania 6-5000”, a swing jazz and pop standard recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Its owner, the Hotel Pennsylvania, claims it to be the oldest continuing telephone number in New York City.[1] The hotel opened in 1919, but the exact age of the telephone number and the veracity of the hotel’s claim are unknown. As of 2021, callers to 212-736-5000 were greeted with the hotel’s phone system recorded greeting that includes a portion of the song.[2]
The namedPennsylvania exchange served the area around Penn Station in New York. The two letters, PE, stand for the numbers 7 and 3, making the phone number 736-5000, not including the later area code 212 for Manhattan.
Actually the one thing that I am surprised has not been mentioned the the peculiar US date system, it really makes no sense whatsoever.
9/11? to me that is the 9th November
DD MM YYYY makes sense - smallest to biggest. 22/5/1922 perfect 22nd May 1922
YYYY MM DD makes sense - biggest to smallest and very convenient for computers to put things in date order (All my photos are named this way) 2001/9/11 or 20010911
BUT
MM DD YYYY who on earth thought that one up?
That is not picking on America but it is completely daft Surely?
To us the Euro way dd/mm/yyyy makes no sense, but it is easy enough to read either.
First time I saw UK date was 21/12/2015, I looked and said WTF there aren’t 21 months what the hell are they doing.
FWIW (and I know it’s been touched-upon briefly) although having followed the thread I can get what you mean, I don’t think that having number problems is always necessarily a bad thing.
As you point out, you Americans are used to buying things in stores with a price displayed AND THEN working out how much extra is tax before you go the the cashier and pay.
From what I can see, many British people have such a poor grasp of basic arithmetic that they can’t even work out how much change they should either get or give when dealing with cash.
But do you see why we think your system is a bit strange? I mean, of course you are so used to it that the rest of the world using our system must seem strange to you. But, as @Bruce said, DD/MM/YYYY is a logically ordered sequence, from the smallest to the largest, and YYYY/MM/DD is also logical as largest to smallest. Your system, though, jumps from medium, back to small, then to large. It doesn’t really have any logic
Actually no.
The logic lies in the importance of the months in business’s. By simply looking at the first number they know what quarter they are in. For me it makes sense because what month it is then the day of that month and of course the year. Using the day first doesn’t make sense to me , because day of what?It seems like the EU treats dates like math problems. high to low…low to high???
Learning everyday. I just learn that in the UK it is a sleeve of cigarettes, in the US it’s a carton. I think in this instance I prefer sleeve it’s more descriptive.
If I moved abroad. The change in the date would be the least of my problems. I can see myself getting used to it fairly easily. Going from dollars to pounds would be a bigger challenge.
When I was young 4 or 5 I asked my dad what the British called a car. He said I believe they refer to them as carriages. So I thought that strange. Then he said British cars have boots. Of course I started laughing at the thought of a car wearing boots. I found out later he was serious.
Haha, and when I was young I giggled at the thought of a car having a trunk
In my late teens I worked for an American company, Du Pont, in London. They had a pile of English/American dictionaries that anyone could take. It was absolutely fascinating, and I have absolutely no idea what happened to my copy. I wish I still had it.
A lot of US terms make more sense than ours - sidewalk for instance, instead of pavement. The term footpath is becoming more prevalent now, but pavement is still widely used, and really it only applies to a footpath made with paving slabs, not tarmac.
I always try to adopt the most descriptive word. See when I think boot, I think small space like for a foot, when I think trunk I thin of a large space. Also, the boot actually works very similar to a wooden trunk and you can secure it with a lock. Bonnet and Hood are equally not very descriptive for what they are. More just name for female headwear and male headwear.
My favorite English word comparison is the word fag. I don’t get why a stick or a cigarette would be called such. Then again I don’t get it being used to negatively to describe a homosexual. To me this in UK or US is just a nonsense word. We have plenty of nonsense words in the US.
I said fag on Reddit and got banned for 3 days…I complained and got myself reinstated but it is a thin line when a computer is judging you.
Your Garbage is our Rubbish
Your Suspenders are our Braces more Common in France I think than the UK, wearing them that is…
Our home has two addresses as the renovations took on an entrance to a different Lane…so we are No 1. xyz… and No.15. abc…next property along is No.11 cant figure where No.13 went, maybe unlucky…
.Numbers… we signed up to a new Telephone/Internet Company via an Agent…The employee I got to go through our new contract seemed helpful…I was told during this long conversation that my Telephone Number that I had for 5 years had to be changed…I had to switch to my mobile for some checks to my landline I was told…
…So most of the time I was conversing with my mobile…The Short of it is…he was a fraudster and robbed my bank…which took me a year to get back and the treatment was horrendous by this very large Company…It was only towards the end of my fight… that they actually admitted he was sacked for being a fraudster to many others.!
.So I am stuck with a Telephone Number that the code is in use, but not known for where I live…Its a new code that’s all…
Numbers…
Two addresses? That’s not confusing. Here only the Main door to your house counts. So whatever street that door faces is usually the one your address is on. Regardless of renovations.
