Are there words that specify that a number was pronounced 'six double zero ' vs 'six zero zero'? [duplicate]
501 can be pronounced 'five hundred one' or 'five zero one'. How do I tell someone how it was pronounced without saying the number. The best I've come up with is 'normal style' vs 'zip code style'. How about some proper terms?
What about the distinction between 'five zero one' style and 'five oh one' style? I know this bit is a long shot but what the heck.
Solution 1:
You are asking about "some proper terms".
In a comment, John Lawler said...
Most speakers have numbers (phone, social security, license, etc) memorized and their pronunciation will become ritualized in their speech. But we don't have a term for it.
But I disagree.
One of the terms might be the psychological concept ...
chunking
- the process by which the mind divides large pieces of information into smaller units (chunks) that are easier to retain in short-term memory. As a result of this recoding, one item in memory (e.g., a keyword or key idea) can stand for multiple other items (e.g., a short list of associated points). The capacity of short-term memory is believed to be constant for the number of individual units it can store (see seven plus or minus two), but the units themselves can range from simple chunks (e.g., individual letters or numbers) to complex chunks (e.g., words or phrases). The exact number of chunks remembered depends on the size of each chunk or the subunits contained within each chunk.
APA Dictionary of Pschology
The chunking theory, developed by Chase and Simon (1973) was an important attempt to formalize the mechanisms linked to chunking. It postulated that attention is serial and short-term memory is limited to about seven items (Miller's magical number).
Springer Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning
This extends to long-term memorization and repetition of numbers in groups of three or more. The magic number seems to be 7.
There are different approaches to this process when repeating numbers such as telephone numbers, zip codes, social security numbers, etc depending on memorization and repetition. Quite often they are cultural.
That means that "double 00", or "oh-oh" can be considered as chunked, but the actual usage depends on the culture of the speaker.