Language reference Numbers Quite apart from all the concepts and English words contained in this book, everyone working in business in English will, sooner or later, need to say numbers, in meetings or on the telephone. This usually quires practice. 1 Zero, oh and nought For the number 0 on its own, we say zero. Before a decimal point we say either zero or nought: 0s 2er0 point five or nought point five After 4 decimal point we say ob: 0.001 ‘nought point ob ob one We also say of in telephone numbers, years, hotel rom numbers, bus numbers, etc. 0121-602 0405 Her number is oh one ewo one, six oh two, oh four oh five. 1805 The Bale of Tisfalgar was in eighteen oh five Room 802, Tm an the top floor, in room eight oh two. (For football scores we say ni: Real Madrid three, Ajax Amsterdam nil (3-O) for tennis we say love: 15-0, ffteen-love. Nobody knows why!) 2 Points and commas In English we use 2 point () and not a comma () for decimals, We only use commas when writing numbers greaer than 999 15.001 fifteen point ch ob one 15,001 fifteen thousand and one 3 Decimals li English, we usually read all the numbers (digits) after a decimal point separately especially if these are more than two decimal places: 0.125 nought point one two five 5.44 five point four four 3.14159 three point one four one five nine 0.001 nought point oh oh one Another way of saying 0.001 is 10° ten to the power minus thrce IF you say 0.125 as zero point a hundred and twenty instincrvely hear 125, and ignore the ze point, thinking that you have made a mmiscake, or changed your mind while speaking. Ifyou are doing deals on the telephone, you could quickly lose a lor of money by getting this wrong . five, an English speaker will Language refrenie 14748 Bar ifthe number aftr a decimal point represents a uni (of money, et.) it tread like 2 o¢mal number £1.50 cone pound fifty FF3.I5 three francs fifteen 2mi8 two metres eighteen 4 Telephone and fax numbers ‘We usually say telephone and fax numbers (and car registration numbers, bank: account numbers, and so on) as individual digi (010 4101273 315052 oh one oh, four one, oh one two seven three, three one five, oh five ovo An exception is doubles’: 0171-225 3466 oh one seven one, double two five, three four double six 5 Hundreds, thousands, millions and billions 100 a hundred 200 ‘owo hundred (nor ewo hundreds) 1,000 a thousand 100,000 abundred thousand (not thousands) 1,000,000 a million (or 10°, ten to the power six) 1,000,000,000 a billion (or 10) One difference between British and American English is thar Americans do not use an and berween the hundreds and tens. For the British, 123,456 is: ‘a hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred and fifty-six For Americans it is ahundied ewenty-three thousand, four hundred fifty-six In the singular the words hundred, thousand, or million are preceded by a ot one: We hired a hundred new workers. “There are over one million potential customers In imprecise numbers, hundreds, thousands or millions take a plural: Wete selling thousands a month. ‘We're earning millions of pounds In precise numbers. or after several and a few, hundred, thousand or million do not take a plural: “To be precise, we have sold cight thousand four hundred and ewemy. Several thousand people have bought the new model We expect to sell a few hundred a week from now on,6 Years The number 1,998 is ‘one thousand nine hundred (and) ninery-cight ‘The year 1998 is: nineteen ninety-cight 7 Square, cube and root 10? ‘en squared 10% ven cubed 8 the square root of 5 8 Fractions Apart from § (a hall), (a quareet) and }(¢hese quarters, sometimes three-fourths in ware mostly ke ordinal numbers (fifth, sath, seventh, owenty first, thiey-second, ete.) i Sods deere. athind,a fifth, a sixth, ete 34 three and a half 2 Cee gENE 9 Calcul 1046=16 ten plus six ie sixteen ten and six equals sixteen 10-4=6 ‘en minus four is six ten take away four equals six 10% 6= 60 tem times six is (or equals) sixty ten muliplied by six istequals sity 10+ 6= 1.666 ten divided by six is one point six recurring Remember to pronounce the s— in fact // — in equals. Itis singular: the rota of everything on the left side equals everything on the right side, ‘The verbs are ro add, subtract (or deduct, but nor deduce), multiply and divide Other ways of saying divide are per: Fels francs per dollar 8% pa eight percent per annum and over: (eye seminusy, over 2 i x-yh x minus y-oversz The per in percent is never stressed: we say pes'CENT. Language efirenie 149150 Lanuage reference 10 Numbers as adjectives ‘When a number is used before a noun, like an adjective, itis always singular: a fifty-minute lesson a twelve-week term a ewenty-minure walk aten thousand pound car auninety-five dollar price cut a.sixcmonth waiting list zone and a half litre bole awenty degre fill in remperature Exercise 1 Look back at Unit 13, and read the following numbers out loud: 1 Arsenal pre-tax profit in 1994, 2 The value of their fixed assets in 1993, 3 The value of their share premium account, 4. ‘The largest Figure to appear on either financial statement. 5 ‘The smallest figure to appear on cither financial statement. Exercise 2 Say the following: 1 In my firs job, in 1976, I earned £38 a week, which was exactly £1,976 a year. “Today they're haying Destschmark ae 1.3952 and selling therm ae 1.3957, Ws cither 0.431 oF 4.031, Lease remember. 41,000,000? Bur chats over $1,590,000! No, its 12,231 mor 12.2518 You can fix them on 066-22 27 47. For further information, call 0171-359 D131. Hes 2m11 al. ike a baskerball player, Ie only cout £13.99. 10 Ie’ssomewhere between 29 and 23. AL 27 x 365 is 9,855, plus 7 for leap years, plus 2 31, and 2 % 30, plus 16 days ~ Tm 10,000 days old today? 12 The equation is x? Exercise 3 @) Listen to the utterances on the recording, and write down the numbers and formulas ‘that you hear (not the complete utterances), Listen again, and check what you have written, Word stress “The basic rules for placing stress in English are as follows: 1 one syllable of nouns (busines), verbs (purchase), adjectives (expensive) and adverbs (quickly is stressed © prepositions (in, at, 10), pronouns (he, me), and articles (a, she) are unstressed