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[ SECRET POST #6045 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6045 ⌋

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I see in US shows and commercials people saying their phone number is [bunch of numbers] followed by an actual word. How does this actually work, I don't understand it. Can someone explain how, to pick an example from Scrubs, 555-"Call Turk" translates into a viable phone number? Please, like I am five?

letters translate to numbers. 1 is a,b,c. 2 is d,e,f. 3 is g,h,i. And so on.

I don't think Call Turk could be one, though. CAL TUrk could be. 114-7764.

Edited 2023-07-25 23:17 (UTC)

what

philstar22 said--i've linked a pic as well so you can see.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-standard-12-key-telephone-keypad-character-layout-follows-the-ITU-E161-standard-8_fig1_221518150

A cellphone keypad looks like this:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shumin-Zhai/publication/221518150/figure/fig1/AS:305488823635968@1449845619238/The-standard-12-key-telephone-keypad-character-layout-follows-the-ITU-E161-standard-8.png

So "Food" would be 3663. "CALL TURK" would be 2255 8875. But there's another layer to the Scrubs joke, because American phone numbers only have 7 digits (not 8), so the number isn't actually CALL TURK, it's CALL TUR. Or Cal Turk. Who sells peace of mind, but only to white people.

This made me laugh because my first thought was, "Someone wasn't around when you had to text using a numeric keypad."

... the whole keypad thing with letters AND numbers predates texting by a LOT.

I am aware, but if they weren't here for number-texting, they likely weren't here before that either... being how time is linear and all.

That's also assuming it's an age thing and not a non-American vs. American thing, like it says in the subject.

Fair. The comments below had me wondering if it really is a rare thing outside of romanized-language countries or even just English (as a major language) countries.

I would imagine it wouldn't uh... "translate" well if you'll pardon the pun lol, so some other languages.

It's a little of both, age and location. Apparently not all European countries had the alphanumeric keypad after the 60s, but it came back eventually with mobile phones and presumably, texting.

I was in Japan in 2000 and the cellphones I saw there had the Japanese equivalent of an alphanumeric keypad, just with Japanese characters, so it's definitely not an English-language-only thing.

Uhh is it weird that as a non-American I never heard of that either and I surely had to text using a numeric keypad?

Hm. I am in my late 30s. I used rotary phone (it had letters on it). I think all phones I used through the years had letters on them. But my country never used text for a phone number outside American ads on cabel TV.

No, this just means "nobody outside the US uses words as stand-in for phone numbers in ads".

Having letters on the phone number pad is only an American thing??

right? a real TiL moment.

It isn't. This person is confused.

Genuine question, would it really be common outside of non-romanized language countries? Like I am wondering if Japanese telephone keypads would have katakana on them or just numbers.

You have me thinking too deeply about this now lol.

NAYRT

Now I got curious, too. Apparently they have katakana ending in -a for some reason. I have no idea why.

https://www.xadara.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/japanese-phone-closeup.jpg

AYRT

Someone who lives/has lived in Japan, explain this right now, lol!

Re: Explain American things to a non American thread.

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-26 00:01 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Explain American things to a non American thread.

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-26 00:03 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Explain American things to a non American thread.

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-26 00:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Explain American things to a non American thread.

(Anonymous) - 2023-07-26 00:36 (UTC) - Expand

This isn't a US thing. This is a 'anywhere with phone pads' thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_keypad

"The use of alphanumeric codes for exchanges was abandoned in Europe when international direct dialing was introduced in the 1960s, because, for example, dialing VIC 8900 on a Danish telephone would result in a different number to dialling it on a British telephone. At the same time letters were no longer placed on the dials of new telephones.

Letters did not re-appear on phones in Europe until the introduction of mobile phones, and the layout followed the new international standard ITU E.161/ISO 9995-8."

letters still existed on british phones, but for practical purposes they were ignored and certainly not used for promotional words

one place where their legacy lingers is landline area codes; kings lynn is 01553, or KL3, for instance, but almost nobody makes that connection

(NE2, 01632, is a redundant code for newcastle that's now used as the uk version of the us 555)

Having words in place of a phone number is 100% an American thing. Doesn't matter that we definitely know about letters on keypads, words as a stand-in for the actual number are just not used outside the US as far as I've seen.

It's probably not as common as in the US, but it's definitely used in my country (Australia).

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