British Numbers confuse Americans - Numberphile
Added 2025-02-19 14:00:14 +0000 UTCComments
I would say double and triple, anything past 3 I would just say four 4's or five 5's
Thomas Godson
2025-05-22 19:01:15 +0000 UTCI don't know mate! I'm just speaking from experience. Frankly, who cares!
Eddy
2025-02-21 21:28:38 +0000 UTCCGP Grey (the stickman in the video) is actually a YouTuber himself, one of the identifying things about his videos is that you don't see him on camera (with one or two occasional exceptions) and that animation style is how he makes his videos. So it makes sense that he's represented the same here too!
settopboxing
2025-02-21 08:23:55 +0000 UTCI've just given an example in the Blur song, so I'm willing to bet that other musicians past or present have used it. Or do you think that the only British person that's ever said it only exists on this album?
White Dwarf
2025-02-19 23:49:58 +0000 UTCMost residential areas will have houses 2, 4, 6, 8 etc on one side and 1, 3, 5, 7 etc on the other. To have such a big discrepancy as he implies is quite rare.
Mark McKeown
2025-02-19 22:01:48 +0000 UTCI lived IN a recording studio for a few years, worked in a jazz club for many years too and never heard one musician count using 'Mississippi'! Nor have I heard 'Piccadilly'. I am 62 and use 'elephant', but probably picked that up in the last 20 years or so, at a guess. Some of these videos about Britain seem to live in an alternative reality!
Eddy
2025-02-19 21:45:58 +0000 UTCAs big kev says” i now know less stuff” after watching that! 😂
Theloyalmuppet
2025-02-19 21:44:05 +0000 UTCI've never seen doors on the other side of the road the way he said , its always been very helpful like all the corresponding numbers are where you would expect , i have heard people use Mississippi when i was young , never the other two , I've always imagined a clock in my head with the sound of the ticks and go along with that even to this day :P pretty sure that's something to do with having a ticking clock in the house in the past , love numberphile , been following and watching them for years and years! also computerphile is worth looking at :)
TheHigh
2025-02-19 21:23:55 +0000 UTCthe odd/even system for house numbers described by the guy in this video definitely happens and it’s confused me at times, but it’s no where near as common as he’s making out. every street i’ve lived on is odd one side, even the other, and increasing together i.e. 1, 3, 5, 7 on the left and 2, 4, 6, 8 on the right. i’ve lived at 37, 18, 3, 109, 6, 69 and now 64 so yeah, double figures is by far and away the most common. 109 was at uni and one represented the apartment block so i guess that’s similar to how New York addresses were described
Charlie Hunt
2025-02-19 21:07:44 +0000 UTCMusicians mainly.
White Dwarf
2025-02-19 19:43:51 +0000 UTCWhich British people use 1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi? I am 61 and I have never used that in my entire life, neither have I used Piccadilly or Elephant.
Clem Fandango
2025-02-19 19:32:46 +0000 UTCThe numbers are almost always on the building - including the range of numbers if it contains multiple
Kieran B
2025-02-19 18:58:55 +0000 UTCThe highest number I’ve ever lived at is 25. I grew up in the country and the house just had a name, there was no number at all. The thing that annoys me is when apartment blocks have no numbers displayed. For work reasons I’m often looking at google streetview trying to identify a building. Sometimes there will be a large number next to the entrance, but often there is no number displayed (apart from a small number on the intercom). It’s infuriating when I’m trying to direct a colleague to a particular address.
Julian T
2025-02-19 18:31:04 +0000 UTCBritish people do say 1 mississippi 2 mississippi 3 mississippi. In fact if you listen to The Debt Collector on the Parklife album by Blur, you will hear them using it to count time. Incidentally though, I remember as a kid learning how to spell mississippi, by saying m,i, double s, i, double s, i, double p, i. I know these are letters, but is it the same for spelling in the U.S.A?
White Dwarf
2025-02-19 18:25:49 +0000 UTCHear hear 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Frank Mac
2025-02-19 18:09:29 +0000 UTCNot to mention dates, of course, which are the bane of any dev's life, particularly because of Americans' insistence of going against the entire rest of the world and being totally illogical with month/day/year. With strongly typed code like .NET languages aand SQL Server databases etc, dates have to be stored in date fields, so you have to format yyyy-mm-dd as mm/dd/yyyy for Americans to understand, but dd/mm/yyyy for everybody else. Worse though, you have to convert Americans' nonsensical input back into yyyy-mm-dd when saving into a database. Sounds easy, I know, but in practice it can be a nightmare!
Eddy
2025-02-19 17:53:33 +0000 UTCA team wins the treble, in darts it's treble 20 etc.For me triple is reserved for spirits
Keith Evans
2025-02-19 16:25:00 +0000 UTCYes, as a database developer, I'm in the habit of saying 'zero' on the phone for clarity's sake.
Eddy
2025-02-19 16:12:25 +0000 UTCI've virtually stopped using cash, except to help the homeless, but have very rarely seen a £50 note. They are notoriously difficult to use too, because nobody trusts they're real; almost harder than Scottish currency down south, in fact!
Eddy
2025-02-19 16:07:28 +0000 UTCI've always used 'elephant'
Eddy
2025-02-19 16:03:44 +0000 UTCI've lived in London since I was 20 (62 now) and have never seen numbers here other than how you describe.
Eddy
2025-02-19 16:02:53 +0000 UTCI started saying Zero when I started working (originally in data entry) and would often have to say policy numbers over the phone which may include O and 0's, so I switched for clarity and have been that way ever since
Daz Parker
2025-02-19 15:42:46 +0000 UTCI'm 35 years old and i've never actually seen a £50 note in real life. I attribute a lot of that to by the time I was of working age, wages were paid directly into the bank and paying on card for things became the norm not too many years after but still.
Daz Parker
2025-02-19 15:40:32 +0000 UTCUsually the house numbers will each go up together - even on one side and odd on the other - if they don’t quite do that there will be a reason for it but there’s always a system I think that guy is just confused and making it sound even more complicated than it is.
Kieran B
2025-02-19 15:40:03 +0000 UTCThat address thing must be a London thing, I'm in England and lived in various parts of the country outside London and I've never once experienced the houses across the street not being the numbers in between the numbers on the side of the street I'm on. Always goes 1, 3, 5, 7 on one side, 2, 4, 6, 8 on the other in my experience.
lemmy
2025-02-19 15:39:07 +0000 UTCAt the end he’s talking about building names that have the number written. So there’s a block of apartments that costs millions of pounds each in Hyde Park called One Hyde Park (not 1 Hyde Park or just 1), it’s mostly a marketing thing but also typically we’re taught to write numbers up to and including ten as words and once you get past that actually start using the number. That’s it basically.
Terrahawk
2025-02-19 15:22:45 +0000 UTCHe’s right, I’ve spent a long time in the US and I automatically ‘translate’ a lot of what I say and after a while you do forget the usual way of saying things. We sometimes use Mississippi here to count as it’s just something that you pick up from film and TV, but have never heard of using Piccadilly, makes sense! I’d probably use potato, although realistically I wouldn’t say or think anything I’d just use a gap
Kieran B
2025-02-19 15:08:36 +0000 UTCI live at number 1 and the highest street number address I have ever had is 21. When I was a child, we lived for a while just outside London in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, and whenever the phone rang, we answered ‘Burnham 25 double 0’. I think four digit phone numbers are long gone!
Thomas
2025-02-19 15:08:13 +0000 UTCYep bills (or notes) stop at £50, I’m nearly 40 and I’ve only ever had one in my life
Kieran B
2025-02-19 15:06:22 +0000 UTCTreble zero
Kieran B
2025-02-19 15:02:33 +0000 UTCFor three numbers I say treble not triple
Keith Evans
2025-02-19 14:48:46 +0000 UTCA "normal" street in the UK follows the pattern of odd numbers on one side and even on the other, so one side goes 1, 3, 5 and the other 2, 4 6 and so on, but it would always start at 1. Where you get more of a cul-de-sac or circular street or simply one that isn't in a neat row with buildings on both sides, the numbers usually just follow one after the other, so the numbers would just go 1, 2, 3 etc. Where a building has been divided into two at a later date, the letter A is normally added, so the numbers may go 1, 2, 2A, 3, etc. Like in America, we say the number of a year differently than we would say the same number in other circumstances. So the year 1997 would be "nineteen ninety seven". In most other circumstances that would be better "one thousand nine hundred and ninety seven". Whilst it would be more common to say "five thousand three hundred" than "fifty three hundred", people will understand both. When it comes to triple numbers, it's probably more common to say "triple zero" or "treble zero" than it would be to say "zero zero zero", but no one would find it strange if you said this. There is no convention about saying this as "zero double zero" or "double zero zero" - these could be used depending on how the number you are reading is written to begin with. Zero is probably a bad example though since some people will say this as zero but probably more common to say as "O" as in the letter O. I tend to use zero in some circumstances just to avoid this confusion.
Andrew Ross
2025-02-19 14:42:41 +0000 UTCThe numbers going in opposite directions in a street isn't always the case but it's to make it easier for post, you just go down one side and then back up the other side in order to where you started
Hakuna
2025-02-19 14:41:57 +0000 UTCPlenty of people will say double zero with a telephone number or credit card number rather than the letter O. Not in the James Bond example of course but in general life. But there doesn't appear to be a reason why people will say it differently
Robert McMillan
2025-02-19 14:41:06 +0000 UTCSaying 53 hundred instead of 5 thousand 3 hundred is to me like saying 10 hundred for 1 thousand. The only time I would say it makes sense to use 19 hundred would be if it was 7pm. When you write 5 thousand 3 hundred the comma is after the 5, not the 3. 5,300
Jay Lo
2025-02-19 14:30:18 +0000 UTCIt would be double O, not Zero. Like Double O 7 (007) James Bond.
Connor Ellis
2025-02-19 14:04:55 +0000 UTC
