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Numbers and Dates... ( Level 2)
If there is, in English a grammar problem that any learner really DREADS, a difficult moment troubling him or her, when reading a text in a loud voice, for instance, or doing a presentation, a report, a lecture etc., it's the nerve-racking moment of 'the stop', 'the hesitation', the 'terror', like an inner sigh, when the learner is facing numbers or dates to read...
That moment is also dreaded by the teachers who have to listen !
1) NUMBERS : HUNDRED, THOUSAND, MILLION preceded by numbers do not take the plural.
a) After HUNDRED + AND + tens + units : 'and' must be put between hundreds and tens, especially in British English.
* 943 = nine hundred and forty-three.
If there are THOUSANDS, but no hundreds, AND mustn't be forgotten.
* 3,052 =Three thousand and fifty-two.
'AND' can't be put between 'THOUSAND' and 'HUNDRED' :
* 5,671= five thousand, six hundred and seventy-one.
b) After ‘millions', ‘thousands',‘hundreds', there must be a comma when the text is written, and when it is spoken, intonation indicates a slight 'pause'...
* 42,325,896 = forty-two million, three hundred and twenty-five thousand, eight hundred and ninety-six.
c) There must be a dash between tens and units:
92 = ninety-two 93 = ninety-three
66 = sixty-six 48 = forty-eight
2) DECIMALS (decimal places) : Instead of the comma behind units, a point (a dot, or stop) is necessary in English (and is pronounced 'point' ) : each decimal is pronounced separately, one after the other.
ex: 3,1416 = 3.1416 = three . (point) one four one six..
3) The process is similar for phone numbers :
ex: 555 1300= five five five one three double O ;
911 = nine one one;
4) DATES :
A) Reading and giving a date is certainly the first sentence a student learns after telling his name ... most of the time, he forgets it very quickly if it's not practised regularly:
* Thursday, April, 22nd 1999 must be read:
- (on) the 22nd (the twenty-second) of April nineteen ninety-nine.
* Wednesday, June 17th 2015 => Wednesday, the seventeenth of June two thousand and fifteen/ twenty (and) fifteen (is more frequently heard!)
Y2K is the acronym of the leap year 2000 (new century, new millenium ) . The problems generated by the softwares which had originally not been adapted to go from Dec. 31. 99 to Jan.1.00 overnight, without creating numerous bugs, were greatly anticipated and worked upon. They were highly reduced or avoided in the different counties all over the world.
Remarque : 1600 = sixteen hundred
: 1605 = sixteen and five (ou ‘sixteen-o-five')



5) Prepositions to be used:
- ON + Day of the week: On Monday.
- ON + Day and date : On Sunday, the tenth.
- IN + month: In March.
- IN + year: In fourteen ninety-two.
Well well! If you remember all this, you'll see a big smile on your teacher's face on D-day! ...

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