Post by Peter T. DanielsPost by RH DraneyI find Ken Blake's assertion that the Tucson area code of 520 is
pronounced "five-two-oh", because up here in Phoenix we'd be more likely
to say "five-twenty"...certainly my own area code of 480 is always
"four-eighty"....r
Bizarre.
Has anyone gotten "four-twenty" yet?
My sources say "unassigned", but as an international "country code" it
belongs to the Czech Republic....
Incidentally, the rule about breaking long strings into pairs of digits
can also be modified by those who assign the numbers, which is why it's
so annoying to hear someone from another country ("where they do things
funny") try to read a US telephone number...here, the breakdown is
<three-digit-area-code>, <three-digit-exchange>, <four-digit-number>,
which does not break down the same way as a single string of ten digits....
American Express (if I'm permitted to reveal what may once have been a
trade secret) displays its 15-digit account number as 4+6+5, forcing the
pairing of digits to break in a couple of odd places...in fact, the
embedded "geo-district" code (telling AmEx people what country you're
from) consists of the last two digits of the first group and the first
digit of the second....
Changing the sub-subject slightly, has anyone ever had to take down a
long "confirmation number" from an automated voice on the telephone,
where the string contains a number of consecutive zeroes?...after
completing your transaction, you're asked to write down for your records
something like "eight-oh-seven-oh-nine-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-..." (my god,
is she all right?) "...-oh-oh-one-three-six", with absolutely no rhythm,
accent, or structure, and presumably to repeat it back the same way if
you have to call customer service later for any reason (miss out just
one "oh" and they'll tell you the confirmation number is invalid)....r