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  • LYNNE MURPHY: I am from upstate New York.

  • CGP GREY: I'm from downstate New York.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: I live now in Brighton, England.

  • CGP GREY: And I live in London now.

  • BRADY HARAN: So how long have you been in the UK?

  • LYNNE MURPHY: 13 years.

  • CGP GREY: So I've been living here for 10 years.

  • And I've spent a lot of that time working as a physics

  • teacher in secondary schools.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: So if you're giving somebody your phone

  • number or your credit card number, and you've got two

  • numbers in a row that are the same.

  • So my number is 8844 in my office.

  • The British way to say that would be double 8, double 4.

  • And it would have never occurred to me

  • to say it that way.

  • CGP GREY: I don't know about Americans in general.

  • But I can say that for me, when I moved to London, I was

  • really thrown by the double numbers

  • thing for quite a while.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: I would say 8, 8, 4, 4.

  • I might say 88, 44.

  • But I wouldn't say double 8, double 4.

  • CGP GREY: When I moved here, there were two problems.

  • One is the double numbers thing.

  • And the second thing is that people say the telephone

  • numbers in a different pattern than they do US numbers.

  • So it was that different pattern, plus people saying

  • things like double 5, double 9.

  • I had such a hard time getting those numbers the first time.

  • And maybe I'm just particularly slow.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: The thing that always trips me up is I don't

  • know whether to say triple when I get three of those

  • things in a row.

  • So if I had a credit card that had three 0's in a row, do I

  • say triple 0?

  • Do I say double 0, 0?

  • Do I say 0, double 0?

  • Do I say 0, 0, 0?

  • I don't know what to say.

  • I'd love to hear from British people, some instruction on

  • how to read my credit card number.

  • CGP GREY: Off the top of my head, I can't think of having

  • ever heard triple, but I wouldn't rule it out.

  • I don't actually know.

  • Perhaps your commenters can let us

  • know if they say triple.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: Another example is what happens when you use

  • numbers in the thousands, or numbers with four digits.

  • The president's address--

  • that's called 1600

  • Pennsylvania Avenue in American.

  • And I think most British people would be comfortable

  • with that being sixteen hundred.

  • But when you get to a bigger number, Americans are happy to

  • say that is fifty-three hundred.

  • A British person would probably call this five

  • thousand three hundred here.

  • CGP GREY: Where I grew up on downstate New York, pretty

  • much everybody around me would say fifty-three hundred.

  • Like for example, I know that my parents will say

  • fifty-three hundred.

  • But for me as a kid, I always found that a confusing way to

  • phrase that.

  • There's something about it that just

  • doesn't jell in my mind.

  • And honestly, it took me years and years to really get that.

  • And so in my mind, when I hear someone say something like

  • seventy-two hundred, I have to kind of think about it in

  • terms of $100 bills.

  • So again, if someone says fifty-three hundred, I have to

  • visualize 53 $100 bills on a table.

  • For me, I always consciously made an effort to say five

  • thousand three hundred instead of fifty-three hundred.

  • BRADY HARAN: Which do you think is more elegant?

  • Fifty-three hundred or five thousand three hundred?

  • LYNNE MURPHY: Well, five thousand three hundred is

  • easier to understand.

  • I mean, when I say fifty-three hundred, I get confused myself

  • whether I mean 5,300 or 53,000.

  • CGP GREY: Even though I think that fifty-three hundred is

  • linguistically nicer--

  • it sort of rolls off the tongue more easily--

  • but I like the precision in saying five

  • thousand three hundred.

  • But I was definitely going against the tide of people

  • that I lived around.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: Nevertheless, I find it easy to say.

  • When I'm thinking of numbers, when I want to say how much

  • something costs.

  • CGP GREY: You deal with $100 bills in America.

  • Like, it's not rare to come across $100 bills.

  • Whereas I don't think there are--

  • now, I'm not 100% sure.

  • But I don't think that there are 100-pound notes that are

  • actually produced.

  • I think it stops at 50.

  • And I have only incredibly rarely in my life, ever seen

  • someone actually use a 50-pound note.

  • And it's always remarkable.

  • Like at a bank, I'll see someone pull out a 50.

  • So maybe that's why as an American, it's easier to think

  • in terms of amounts of $100 bills, right?

  • I have 12 $100 bills.

  • So that's twelve hundred.

  • I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

  • But that might be why British people are not as comfortable

  • with that kind of phrasing.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: The second year of the 2000s was two thousand

  • one, in American speech, generally.

  • But in British speech, that sounds weird.

  • That sounds American.

  • You'd say two thousand and one.

  • So two thousand one, two thousand and one.

  • CGP GREY: This is one of those cases where, having lived in

  • London for 10 years, and in particular, having taught in

  • front of classes and being very used to speaking to

  • British people all the time, I can sometimes kind of forget

  • these little phrases, and which way have

  • I always said it.

  • And just naturally thinking about it, the two thousand and

  • one or two thousand one--

  • which way would I have said it when I was in New York?

  • I'm not 100% sure.

  • I think I would've said two thousand one, but it's one of

  • those things that gets kind of lost when you move from one

  • country to another.

  • Sometimes those little things can just kind of--

  • you just become uncertain about how it was.

  • And then you feel like a crazy person, right?

  • You feel like, I should know how I used to say things, but

  • you just lose it.

  • But I did look up, after you mentioned that the two

  • thousand and one--

  • I wanted to see how Arthur C. Clarke

  • actually says that number.

  • ARTHUR C. CLARKE: Of course, "Two Thousand and One"--

  • CGP GREY: He's British, and he says in interviews-- he says

  • "Two Thousand and One" as the title for his book is the way

  • he always phrased it.

  • I tried to find some audio of Stanley Kubrick saying the

  • title of the movie.

  • But he's an incredibly secretive kind of guy and

  • didn't do very many interviews about it.

  • And so I was unable to find any clip of Stanley Kubrick

  • actually speaking aloud the name of perhaps his most

  • famous movie.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: If you want to count out seconds, which

  • people sometimes need to do, a typical way of doing this is

  • to have a word that you put in between your numbers to make

  • it long enough that you've got a full second

  • between the two numbers.

  • And the typical way to do this in American English, or a

  • typical way to do it is to use the word Mississippi.

  • So 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi.

  • CGP GREY: 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi, 6 Mississippi.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: Hopefully, it's about a second.

  • I've never actually tested it.

  • CGP GREY: I have no idea where it comes from, except that

  • it's a fun word to say.

  • And it's long, so that seems like an obvious choice to go

  • in the middle.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: Another way to do it is 1, one thousand, 2,

  • one thousand, which you'll notice has a different number

  • of syllables.

  • The 1, one thousand, 2, one thousand I think is found in

  • both America and Britain.

  • But then in Britain, you've got other ones, like 1

  • Piccadilly, 2 Piccadilly, 3 Piccadilly, or 1 elephant, 2

  • elephant, 3 elephant.

  • CGP GREY: I was trying to think about this, and I don't

  • think I've ever had the opportunity to hear any of my

  • students count in this kind of way that you would do, where

  • you're intentionally doing seconds.

  • So I don't know what any of them would have said.

  • But you asking me about this is basically the first time

  • I've ever heard about Piccadilly or elephant.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: When I said 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi,

  • that's how I learned it, with that very specific, sing-song

  • kind of rhythm to help you count out the seconds.

  • And because I've only done this on the blog, I've not

  • actually heard people say 1 Piccadilly, 2 Piccadilly.

  • I'm not quite sure how they're singing it.

  • CGP GREY: Piccadilly I think is OK.

  • It has that same kind of rhythm as Mississippi, right?

  • So 1 Mississippi, 2 Piccadilly, 3 elephant.

  • Elephant does not work.

  • I don't think that works at all.

  • 1 elephant, 2 elephant--

  • it's so clunky.

  • It's no good at all.

  • I have to veto that one, but Piccadilly, Piccadilly seems

  • incredibly similar to Mississippi.

  • So I'm perfectly happy with that as a difference.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: But it's also the kind of thing that I've

  • found people have family versions of that aren't used

  • anywhere outside their extended families.

  • There's room for lots of variation.

  • BRADY HARAN: We want to hear what word you put in between

  • numbers when you count, to make sure

  • there's a second spacing.

  • So put comments under the video.

  • Mississippi, elephant, Piccadilly, thousand,

  • something different?

  • We want to know.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: People often ask me, or express astonishment

  • when they get American addresses that they need to

  • send something to.

  • And the address might be four or five digits long, the

  • number before the street.

  • So to live at 2787 Main Street, or

  • something like that.

  • Whereas the last place I lived here was number 7, and my

  • mother always found that strange.

  • She often wrote it as 70.

  • She just couldn't imagine that I really lived at a place that

  • was only number 7 in the great scheme of things.

  • CGP GREY: It's funny, because I never really tuned into the

  • low house numbers thing.

  • I mean, now that you have mentioned it, it seems

  • incredibly obvious.

  • And yes, I can think of a bunch of addresses in my life

  • here that were low numbers.

  • And it's definitely the case-- well, at least it's the case

  • in New York growing up that I don't think there was ever a

  • house number that was less than 100.

  • So I knew people who lived in 100, or 107, or 109 houses,

  • but I don't think there was ever a single address that was

  • below that number.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: Where I'm from, you never have a single digit.

  • You rarely have a two-digit street address.

  • So my family is on the first block of Miller Street, and

  • the first number is 100.

  • Well, it's about the grid road system in America.

  • In England, you don't talk about blocks the same way you

  • do in America, because the roads are all

  • higgledy-piggledy and don't necessarily make nice squares.

  • But since American ones typically do make nice

  • squares, what you want in the system is to have the numbers

  • all match within each block.

  • You talk about the 100 block of Miller Street.

  • Once you cross the road that intersects with Miller Street

  • and go on to the next block, it'll be the 200 block.

  • So my block of my street where I grew up goes up to 131.

  • And then it starts over at 200 once you cross the road.

  • BRADY HARAN: So your numbers get higher quicker.

  • LYNNE MURPHY: Yeah.

  • CGP GREY: It is almost unbelievable to me that the

  • numbers on one side of the street don't have anything to

  • do with the numbers on the other side of the street.

  • And I still come across this, and it's just appalling--

  • right?

  • That you're walking across the street, and the numbers on one

  • side are going 3, 5, 7, 9.

  • And you look across the other side of the street, and the

  • numbers will be 50, 48, 46, right?

  • They're even, they're not aligned, and they're going in

  • the opposite direction and it's just maddening.

  • I don't understand how this came to be, why anybody has

  • let it stand for as long as it has.

  • It is just baffling to me.

  • And the first few times that I ran across this, that I didn't

  • realize, like, you have to check the numbers on the other

  • side of the street, I got severely lost in London a

  • couple of times, trying to find places.

  • Because I'm walking down very long streets in the completely

  • opposite direction, thinking, oh, I'll just cross the street

  • when I need those even numbers, right?

  • And then you get to wherever you're supposed to be, you

  • cross the street.

  • And you're hundreds off from wherever you were actually

  • trying to get.

  • But you're still on the same street.

  • It's just unbelievable to me.

  • It's like, I refuse to believe that humans ever decided to do

  • this on purpose.

  • This isn't exactly number related, but I can tell you

  • the thing that I did notice, that I find is just charming,

  • is the habit of naming buildings "houses." So even

  • like, a giant office building will sometimes have a name.

  • And it'll be like, 70 Darwin House.

  • But this house suffix, or this house label for, like, big

  • corporate buildings, or just council flats, I find is kind

  • of remarkable and very charming in and of itself.

  • That strikes me as being very British, where someone could

  • say, oh, I live at 50 Feinman House.

  • But 50 Feinman House is a gigantic tower block, right?

  • It's not like a little cottage, like it sounds.

  • So I do quite like that.

  • I love to explore the city and just kind of wander around.

  • And there's always a ton of construction going on.

  • And in particular, in the past few years and right now,

  • there's a bunch of big, luxury buildings going up, or that

  • have been recently constructed.

  • And I can't help but notice that all of them want to be

  • number one at whatever they are.

  • So for example, there's 1 London Bridge, and there's 1

  • Blackfriar's, there's 1 Tower Bridge.

  • And these are luxury buildings.

  • And they always write it really big on the sign.

  • It'll say 1 Blackfriar's.

  • And the other thing that I can't help but notice is they

  • always like to write out the one.

  • It's O-N-E. It's never the number 1.

  • I find that interesting.

  • I assume that somewhere, some architecture firm decided that

  • this is a kind of luxury statement.

  • I'd be curious to know if this happens

  • elsewhere in the world.

  • Because as we discussed, I don't think that it can happen

  • in New York, because the buildings

  • can't start at 1, right?

  • They have to start at 100.

  • But I've noticed that some of these buildings that label

  • themselves as 1 whatever--

  • they're in suspicious spots.

  • Where I look around and I think, I'm not sure that you

  • can really claim that you are 1 Tower Bridge.

  • There are numerous buildings here, any of which looks like

  • they could be number 1 Tower Bridge.

  • So I have my doubts about the accuracy

  • of this number system.

  • Although with the street numbers, who knows, right?

  • The numbers don't have anything to do with anything,

  • so they could just be all over the place.

  • -So a man walks into a bar.

  • He asks for 10 times more drinks than everyone else.

  • The barman says, now that is an order of magnitude.

LYNNE MURPHY: I am from upstate New York.

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