NULL point zero five!

[tkamiya]

I've seen several videos where a person pronounces 0.05, for example, as NULL point zero five.

Is this expression common in certain countries?  Technically speaking, null is not zero.  It's an absence of value and zero is a value.

[bdunham7]

Is this expression common in certain countries?  Technically speaking, null is not zero.  It's an absence of value and zero is a value.

Null is German for zero.  I suppose that bleeds over into English somewhere.  No worse than "oh point oh five".

[Mechatrommer]

It's an absence of value and zero is a value.

zero lemon on the plate, is that means there is lemon? show us on your hand where is "value". its just a word, what matters is what the word implies. this is where most literarists failed to understand.

Is this expression common in certain countries?  Technically speaking, null is not zero.  It's an absence of value and zero is a value.

Null is German for zero.  I suppose that bleeds over into English somewhere.  No worse than "oh point oh five".

i heard some people use knock point knock something. Dave i think one of them. what do you knock? non-literarist i'm, imho as long as we can understand them 

[Rick Law]

Is this expression common in certain countries?  Technically speaking, null is not zero.  It's an absence of value and zero is a value.

Null is German for zero.  I suppose that bleeds over into English somewhere.  No worse than "oh point oh five".

I don't mind the "NULL point zero five", but swapping comma and decimal dot drives me nuts...
USA:  Say for example one million and one cent is 1,000,000.01
In some German writings, I've seen the same written as 1.000.000,01
With such swapping, I have a hard time with the meaning of (say for example) 1.000,001.  Is that really 1,000.001 or what is it really...

As to taking words from other languages...  Certainly lot of that in English.  The same is true for almost in any language whenever peoples interact with each other.  They take words and expressions from each other.

"Kids in kindergarten are having a beef dinner."

Two words with German origin and two words of French origin in that sentence.  Kids, and Kindergarten are from German, and Beef and Dinner are from French.  Oh, even the word sentence is also from French.

May I suggest some good entertainment. "Story of English" and "Adventures of English" are both great TV documentaries on the topic of how English developed and morphed.  Great show.  That's where I learned "beef" originated from French.

[retiredfeline]

i heard some people use knock point knock something. Dave i think one of them. what do you knock? non-literarist i'm, imho as long as we can understand them 

It's nought, which is an English word with centuries of history, and cognate with Dutch niet and German nicht.

[Mechatrommer]

i heard some people use knock point knock something. Dave i think one of them. what do you knock? non-literarist i'm, imho as long as we can understand them 

It's nought, which is an English word with centuries of history, and cognate with Dutch niet and German nicht.

still... what is centuries of history point centuries of history five?

[Syntax Error]

This gotcha is a problem when 'literalizing' numbers to their local culture context. Especially in text-to-speech systems. In the variants of English, it is perfectly valid to speak "0." as any permutation of...
"zero|oh|nill|null" "point|dot|decimal"

120.06
one-two-zero-decimal-zero-six (aviation)
one-two-oh-point-oh-six (navigation)
a-hundred-and-twenty-bucks-and-six-cents (finance)

0.05
zero-point-oh-five
point-oh-five
five-percent! Depending on the context.

All valid.

9 can be "niner" in EN-US.

The French use "top" for zero in the context of a countdown.

+++ And not forgetting the 2000 decade, which is the "noughties".

[0xdeadbeef]

I don't mind the "NULL point zero five", but swapping comma and decimal dot drives me nuts...
USA:  Say for example one million and one cent is 1,000,000.01
In some German writings, I've seen the same written as 1.000.000,01
With such swapping, I have a hard time with the meaning of (say for example) 1.000,001.  Is that really 1,000.001 or what is it really...

It's not a typical German thing, more a European/ISO thing. It's quite interesting to see how this developed during the centuries.
Personally, I grew up with home computers and calculators using the decimal point, used programming languages all my life that used the decimal point and therefore find it somewhat confusing that German versions of Excel and the like force me to use the comma. Using programs with either comma or point as decimal separator all the time is actually already pretty annoying, but it's somewhat bearable if there's just one comma/point in a number. Actually the use of comma/point to group thousands is what drives me crazy.

As to taking words from other languages...  Certainly lot of that in English.  The same is true for almost in any language whenever peoples interact with each other.  They take words and expressions from each other.
"Kids in kindergarten are having a beef dinner."
Two words with German origin and two words of French origin in that sentence.  Kids, and Kindergarten are from German, and Beef and Dinner are from French.  Oh, even the word sentence is also from French.

"Old English" (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) is a German (note: there's an ambiguity of this word in English which doesn't exist in modern "German") dialect as is Dutch (Dutch->"Deutsch"/German), that's why there are lots of similarities which go far back. Besides, the Vikings raided England during the middle ages which had a Norse (i.e. German) impact on the language. Both languages also took over words from Latin etc. early ("nose"/"Nase" from Latin "nāsus" etc.). French influence in English is not so surprising due to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Then there's the Celtic influence in English as well. That's why English tends to have two or three words for the same thing.

Of course this influence of languages on each other still continues. I'd still think that since the 20th century, the impact of English on other languages is much higher than the other way round though (due to Hollywood movies, computer technology, the USA becoming the superpower of the West etc.). Modern German is totally messed up by anglicisms which tend to be weird, confusing or simply wrong. I.e. we use "Handy" for a mobile phone, "Pullover/Pullunder" for a (sleaveless) sweater, "Quizmaster" for the host of a quiz show etc. Lots of product names are a mess of pseudo-English mixed with German. Like "Sunlicht" (instead of either "sunlight" or "Sonnenlicht"). Currently, some companies are starting to use English names of chemical components while there are long established German ones. Since the eighties, movie translations and the like just use the English word for some terms instead of bothering to look up the proper German one ("hydrogen/oygen" is translated as "Hydrogen/Oxygen" instead of "Wasserstoff/Sauerstoff). Even some English grammar is creeping into German. Like "makes sense" ("Sinn machen" instead of "Sinn ergeben") or using terms like "in 2021". Letting aside that people use terms like "downgeloaded" (mix of "downloaded" and the proper German translation "heruntergeladen").

I kinda thought that (modern) German might be the language plagued most by confusingly used anglicisms until I learned that Japanese is even worse. E.g. the word for "bread" (but also for "frying pan") is パン (pan) derived from the English "pan". Dunno where they got the idea that bread is fried in a pan or whatever this is supposed to mean.

[retiredfeline]

I kinda thought that (modern) German might be the language plagued most by confusingly used anglicisms until I learned that Japanese is even worse. E.g. the word for "bread" (but also for "frying pan") is パン (pan) derived from the English "pan". Dunno where they got the idea that bread is fried in a pan or whatever this is supposed to mean.

You don't consider the possibility that they got pan for bread from Romance languages? Pão/Pan/Pain?

[0xdeadbeef]

You don't consider the possibility that they got pan for bread from Romance languages? Pão/Pan/Pain?

Actually most words written in Katakana seem to be borrowed from English, but not all of them of course. There are actually very few borrowed from German like "バイト (baito)" which seems to come from German "Arbeit" (work). So you're probably right. Probably "pan" that was no an ideal example. Anyway, the main point was that there are LOTS of words in modern Japanese which are based on English (or other European languages) and they are not always used in a way that would make total sense in the original language. Then again, they borrowed their letters, numbers and half of the words from Chinese, so integration of other languages seems like a cultural tradition in Japan.

[madires]

I don't mind the "NULL point zero five", but swapping comma and decimal dot drives me nuts...
USA:  Say for example one million and one cent is 1,000,000.01
In some German writings, I've seen the same written as 1.000.000,01
With such swapping, I have a hard time with the meaning of (say for example) 1.000,001.  Is that really 1,000.001 or what is it really...

From my experience it's more of an English - Non-English issue. Most English speaking countries use dot for the decimals and commas for grouping, while most Non-English speaking countries do the exact opposite. However, one could use also spaces for grouping. Then it wouldn't matter if a comma or dot is used to indicate decimals, since the purpose is obvious:
1.000.000,01 -> 1 000 000,01
1,000,000.01 -> 1 000 000.01

[madires]

You don't consider the possibility that they got pan for bread from Romance languages? Pão/Pan/Pain?

The Latin word for bread is "panis" as is the well known term "panem et circenses".

[Renate]

It's nice to see such an erudite discussion here.

Null (as in English "null detector")/null (as in German "zero")/nought is fine by me when spoken.

Code: [Select]

   char a = NULL; // Ow, my brain hurts
   char b = '\0'; // That's better

[Zero999]

I don't mind the "NULL point zero five", but swapping comma and decimal dot drives me nuts...
USA:  Say for example one million and one cent is 1,000,000.01
In some German writings, I've seen the same written as 1.000.000,01
With such swapping, I have a hard time with the meaning of (say for example) 1.000,001.  Is that really 1,000.001 or what is it really...

From my experience it's more of an English - Non-English issue. Most English speaking countries use comma for the decimals and dots for grouping, while most Non-English speaking countries do the exact opposite.

I think you've got that backwards: most English speaking countries use the dot for the decimal and commas for grouping.

However, one could use also spaces for grouping. Then it wouldn't matter if a comma or dot is used to indicate decimals, since the purpose is obvious:
1.000.000,01 -> 1 000 000,01
1,000,000.01 -> 1 000 000.01

Yes, spacing for grouping is my preference, especially in an international setting, but it's even better to use SI-prefixes, or *10^x (preferably with x being a multple of 3, as it makes it eaiser to add a SI-prefix), as single digit precision for magnitudes in the millions is seldom required.

You don't consider the possibility that they got pan for bread from Romance languages? Pão/Pan/Pain?

The Latin word for bread is "panis" as is the well known term "panem et circenses".

As a native English speaker, the word "panis" appears to be a misspelling of the male reproductive organ.

[dl6lr]

1.000.000,01 -> 1 000 000,01
1,000,000.01 -> 1 000 000.01

Of course the swiss invented another one:

1’000’000.01

[thinkfat]

How do you translate the German colloquial "null komma nichts"?

"Oh point naught" ?

[Syntax Error]

How do you translate the German colloquial "null komma nichts"?

Es nada con nada...

[retiredfeline]

How do you translate the German colloquial "null komma nichts"?

"Oh point naught" ?

Oh point nought actually.

There are two words in English of common origin for different contexts. The rescue came to naught, but Noughts and crosses.

I'm just waiting for some reporter to latch onto say a story of a captain saving the ship by coming to a halt in time: Nought knots not naught. 

Also, a cartoon from decades ago. Reagan opens the Olympics games saying: Oh, Oh Oh Oh, Oh! Agent behind him whispers: Mr President, you're reading the logo. 

[madires]

I think you've got that backwards: most English speaking countries use the dot for the decimal and commas for grouping.

Yep, of course. I'm used to both variants, so it doesn't bother me.

As a native English speaker, the word "panis" appears to be a misspelling of the male reproductive organ.

There are a lot of words in different languages which sound the same or even are written the same, but having completely different meanings, sometimes naughty. For example, the German word for curve is "Kurve", but a Romanian would think you're talking about a prostitute. Do you like mocca (the coffee variant)? In Hungarian it means "for free". Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

[Renate]

Well, I was born in nineteen-aught-eight. (I'm very old.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_the_number_0_in_English
Ich bin 08/15 (nullachtfünfzehn). (I'm really boring.) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/08/15_(Redewendung)

[jmelson]

I kinda thought that (modern) German might be the language plagued most by confusingly used anglicisms until I learned that Japanese is even worse. E.g. the word for "bread" (but also for "frying pan") is パン (pan) derived from the English "pan". Dunno where they got the idea that bread is fried in a pan or whatever this is supposed to mean.

French?  French for bread is "pain", pronounced as paan, or thereabouts.

Jon

[tkamiya]

I used to be a part of a large software design team.  We found out there are twenty-something different kind of numeric separators around the world, including rather obscure ones.  It was a royal pain to validate them to make sure the expression was "legal" in the context of language used.  Same thing for dates, calendars, and currencies.

Other than the usual commas and periods, I saw spaces, apostrophes, quotes and double quotes, and just about every combination of which.... 

I have only been educated in Japan and US, which happen to share most of the expressions.  It leaves a lot of room for misinterpretations and misunderstandings even then.  I can't imagine using numbers that includes spaces and quotes....

[tkamiya]

I kinda thought that (modern) German might be the language plagued most by confusingly used anglicisms until I learned that Japanese is even worse. E.g. the word for "bread" (but also for "frying pan") is パン (pan) derived from the English "pan". Dunno where they got the idea that bread is fried in a pan or whatever this is supposed to mean.

French?  French for bread is "pain", pronounced as paan, or thereabouts.

Jon

Similarly, collared business shirts are called "Y-shirts" in Japan.  Legend says a Japanese person asked western person asking what it is he is wearing is called.  A reply was "a white shirt."  That was heard incorrectly as "why shirt" which became "Y-shirt" of today.  (pronounced as why-shirts)  So it is possible to have a blue Y shirt in Japan....

[Vovk_Z]

From my experience it's more of an English - Non-English issue. Most English speaking countries use dot for the decimals and commas for grouping, while most Non-English speaking countries do the exact opposite. However, one could use also spaces for grouping. Then it wouldn't matter if a comma or dot is used to indicate decimals, since the purpose is obvious:
1.000.000,01 -> 1 000 000,01
1,000,000.01 -> 1 000 000.01

Cyrillic decimating point was always (<1990y) a comma ','. I mean we always have had 1000 000,01 (and only a space separator or no separator for 10^3). It was so until personal computers (PC) came to us. Since that time (the 1990s) we have a mess - we use both '.' and ',' as a decimal point.
So now we have 1 000 000,01 = 1 000 000.01 = 1000000,01 etc. But we still don't use this 10^3 separator - 1.000.000,01 or 1,000,000.01.
As for me, if I need a 10^3 separator (not a 'space'), I prefer to use something like 1'000'000.01 = 1'000'000,01. It is much easier not to be confused.

[Zero999]

I think you've got that backwards: most English speaking countries use the dot for the decimal and commas for grouping.

Yep, of course. I'm used to both variants, so it doesn't bother me.

As a native English speaker, the word "panis" appears to be a misspelling of the male reproductive organ.

There are a lot of words in different languages which sound the same or even are written the same, but having completely different meanings, sometimes naughty. For example, the German word for curve is "Kurve", but a Romanian would think you're talking about a prostitute. Do you like mocca (the coffee variant)? In Hungarian it means "for free". Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

Yes and such misunderstandings can cause a lot of trouble. A classic example is language professor being fired because snowflake reported him, because they thought he said nigger, when he was talking Chinese. 

Professor Greg Patton at the University of Southern California (USC) was telling students in a communications lecture last month about filler, or pause words, such as 'err', 'umm' or 'you know' in English. Footage of his lecture, which has now gone viral, shows Prof Patton saying: "In China, the common pause word is 'that, that, that'. So in China, it might be na-ge, na-ge, na-ge." Enunciated, na-ge sounds like the N-word, which led several of the professor's students to complain to the university. Responding to the complaint, the dean of the university, Geoffrey Garrett, told students that Prof Patton would no longer be teaching the course.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-54107329

[0xdeadbeef]

Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

Only the first syllable is pronounced more like "foo" - but I guess that's not so much different from what a Scot would pronounce it like - and I doubt that many German native speakers won't get the reference. Partly because the German word is nearly the same as they have the same (old) German root (more or less just u <-> i).
By the way, the name is not changed because anybody of the natives is offended but simply because they are tired of the tourists coming there, making photos and stealing the town sign. Germans/Austrians are not easily offended regarding suggestive family and town names. We have our own share of these.

[TimFox]

I kinda thought that (modern) German might be the language plagued most by confusingly used anglicisms until I learned that Japanese is even worse. E.g. the word for "bread" (but also for "frying pan") is パン (pan) derived from the English "pan". Dunno where they got the idea that bread is fried in a pan or whatever this is supposed to mean.

French?  French for bread is "pain", pronounced as paan, or thereabouts.

Jon
[/quote]

Actually, the standard explanation of the Japanese word for "bread" is that it comes from the Portuguese "pão", which is a cognate of the French word "pain".  There was little contact between France and Japan before the Meiji era.  "Arbito" is the only loan from German with which I am familiar.


[/quote]

[newbrain]

There are a lot of words in different languages which sound the same or even are written the same, but having completely different meanings, sometimes naughty. For example, the German word for curve is "Kurve", but a Romanian would think you're talking about a prostitute. Do you like mocca (the coffee variant)? In Hungarian it means "for free". Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

Ah, the joy of having false friends...
With Swedish and Italian there's quite a bunch!

In Swedish "fika" means "a longish pause, usually with coffee and some sweets", while in Italian "fica" is the vulgar term for female genitalia (same as "cunt" but also a rude word to indicate a beautiful woman).
This is extra fun when you are given the task to"bring some fika" (as in bringing the aforementioned sweets) and you explain it to your Italian wife.
She will probably hit you with something heavy, procuring you what in Italy is known as a "fitta" (a sharp, intense and unexpected pain - fit).
In Swedish, of course, "fitta" is the vulgar word for female genitalia, so it all makes sense, she was only trying to help.

Remember: do not try to make amends by promising to bring her a "tröja" (sweater), as in Italian "troia" is the rude word for a female prostitute (lit: sow, somewhat vulgar).

[thinkfat]

Not to forget the German "Knüller" and the similar sounding Swedish expression.

[Mr. Scram]

I've seen several videos where a person pronounces 0.05, for example, as NULL point zero five.

Is this expression common in certain countries?  Technically speaking, null is not zero.  It's an absence of value and zero is a value.

The word for zero in many languages is derived from the Latin nulla or nulla figura, meaning "nothing" or "no number". The difference between zero and null was not defined as both were the same thing. I'd be hesitant to flat out claim it's wrong without first declaring a very specific context.

[SparkyFX]

In the context of SQL databases "NULL" means "no value", but not "Zero" (as in number "0"). These distinctions play a huge role in any programming/query language and how these things are interpreted need to be defined in the syntax definition. Trying to apply colloquial understanding is a very slippery slope.

[S. Petrukhin]

Who knows the history of why in many countries the date is written starting from the year, but the time starts from the hour?
And why is the postal address written in the opposite direction to the route?

[S. Petrukhin]

There are a lot of words in different languages which sound the same or even are written the same, but having completely different meanings, sometimes naughty. For example, the German word for curve is "Kurve", but a Romanian would think you're talking about a prostitute. Do you like mocca (the coffee variant)? In Hungarian it means "for free". Recently one town in Austria announced to change its name from "Fucking" to "Fugging", despite it's pronounced differently in German.

Ah, the joy of having false friends...
With Swedish and Italian there's quite a bunch!

In Swedish "fika" means "a longish pause, usually with coffee and some sweets", while in Italian "fica" is the vulgar term for female genitalia (same as "cunt" but also a rude word to indicate a beautiful woman).
This is extra fun when you are given the task to"bring some fika" (as in bringing the aforementioned sweets) and you explain it to your Italian wife.
She will probably hit you with something heavy, procuring you what in Italy is known as a "fitta" (a sharp, intense and unexpected pain - fit).
In Swedish, of course, "fitta" is the vulgar word for female genitalia, so it all makes sense, she was only trying to help.

Remember: do not try to make amends by promising to bring her a "tröja" (sweater), as in Italian "troia" is the rude word for a female prostitute (lit: sow, somewhat vulgar).

In Russian, one rude phrase can be scolded, praised, and admired. We have a joke: the german engineer could not understand how the russians fix this <expletive 1> with this <expletive 2>, while <expletive 1> and <expletive 2> are interchangeable. 

[glinjik]

In Russian адин =1 первый =first but when counting 1=раз