Twelvefret
Forum GOD!
We were taught to "put a fork in it, it's done". 
Do Americans say Ta for thank you?
- Thread starter Vacumatic
- Start date
TexStubble
Forum GOD!
I began writing zeroes with a slash while in the military. I don't recall where I picked up the habit of crossing 7's and Z's - it was not taught that way in school.
cairnish
Forum GOD!
I think the mole in the book was a secret Nazi although I think "not from here" was all that was necessary, plot-wise.
I picked it up after that book!
When I was growing up in the UK we always wrote 7's unadorned. In Primary School as I recall, we were taught that crossed 7's were "Continental" (or maybe "French"?).
I started crossing 7's on a regular basis when I started studying Engineering (and continue to do so). We were taught the logic that a crossed 7 cannot easily be mistaken for a 1.
Most of the general population in the UK still seem to use unadorned 7's...
<geek mode off>
I work in IT and always cross sevens and zeroes to distinguish them from ones and the letter O.
Unfortunately, no PP Advent calendar…snort, snort. But they have a boat load of other PP paraphernalia.
Wickham-Soap-Co
Happy Shaving!
I, too, line my sevens, but how do you write your fours?When I was growing up in the UK we always wrote 7's unadorned. In Primary School as I recall, we were taught that crossed 7's were "Continental" (or maybe "French"?).
I started crossing 7's on a regular basis when I started studying Engineering (and continue to do so). We were taught the logic that a crossed 7 cannot easily be mistaken for a 1.
Most of the general population in the UK still seem to use unadorned 7's...
<geek mode off>
I write mine like the third four above.
hotmetal
Forum GOD!
I'm UK and lived in Germany for a year. I was brought up with a 1 and 7 looking pretty much as per the keyboard equivalents. When I got to Hamburg it was immediately obvious why they needed to cross their 7s when I saw how they wrote their 1s. The top stroke of the 1 was sometimes almost as long as the downstroke, which looked pretty ambiguous to me and more than capable of being mistaken for a 7.
Back to 'ta', this is in my experience not a hangover from learning to talk as a child at all, it's a very common abbreviation amongst primarily adults I would say, although I'm not sure whether it's regional or class-based. Down south (London and surrounding area) it is probably mostly associated with working class, market traders, tradesmen, although by no means exclusively. I've said ta or cheers for decades and never given it any thought before this. I reckon I would be pretty surprised if I heard it said by someone from the US unless they had picked it up over here.
Back to 'ta', this is in my experience not a hangover from learning to talk as a child at all, it's a very common abbreviation amongst primarily adults I would say, although I'm not sure whether it's regional or class-based. Down south (London and surrounding area) it is probably mostly associated with working class, market traders, tradesmen, although by no means exclusively. I've said ta or cheers for decades and never given it any thought before this. I reckon I would be pretty surprised if I heard it said by someone from the US unless they had picked it up over here.
cairnish
Forum GOD!
At one point the avionics display group I worked in had contracts with Smiths in Cheltenham and Allied Signal in New Jersey. The differences in language in how those two companies expressed (deep) disappointment when a prototype failed or other disaster occurred was, uh, notable to say the least. OK, it was hilarious. But not the failures, those were terrible. Apologies for the digression.
Twelvefret
Forum GOD!
My granddaughters and I bid each other goodbye with ta-ta.
hotmetal
Forum GOD!
Oh yeah tata or tada is a thing as well, for goodbye. Unrelated to ta for thank you, but very similar and also quite widespread. There was a radio presenter on the BBC (I forget who) whose catchphrase was "TTFN, tata for now".
Edit: well I'll be da**ed.
And apparently Tim Horton of coffee fame over the pond has it on his grave!
en.m.wikipedia.org
Edit: well I'll be da**ed.
And apparently Tim Horton of coffee fame over the pond has it on his grave!
TTFN - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Last edited: