Three men in the hotel

Three men go to a hotel. They ask the clerk,«How much is a room?" and the clerk tells them it is $30. They each pay the clerk $10 and go to the room. The clerk knew that the room rate was really only $25 and started to feel guilty about overcharging the men so he gave the bellboy a $5 bill and told him to return the money to the men. The bellboy knew that $5 didn't divide evenly among the three men, so he kept the $5 bill and returned one dollar to each of the men, keeping the extra $2 for himself. So each of the three men paid $9 for the room ($27 total) and the bellboy kept $2. Where is the other dollar?

Supplement

 

Saying numbers

1. Saying 0 in English:

We say oh              after a decimal point    5.03              five point oh three

                              in telephone numbers  67 01 38   six seven oh one three eight

                              in bus numbers            No. 701        get the seven oh one

                              in hotel room numbers Room            I’m in room two oh six

                              in years                        1905             nineteen oh five

We say nought          before the decimal point 0.02            nought point oh two

We say zero               for the number             0                   the number zero

                              for temperature             -5˚C      five degrees below zero

We say nil                  in football scores            5 - 0        Argentina won five nil

We say love               in tennis                       15 – 0    The score is fifteen love

 

Say the following: 1) The exact figure is 0.002. 2) Can you get back to me on 01244 24907? I’ll be there all morning. 3) Can you put that on my bill? I’m in room 804. 4) Do we have to hold the conference in Reykjavik? It’s 30 degrees below 0! 5) What’s the score? 2 – 0 to Juventus.

 

 

Per cent

The stress is on the cent of per cent: ten per CENT   

We say:

0.5%                                                 a half of one per cent

 

Say the following:  1) What’s 30% of 260? 2) 0.75% won’t make any difference.   

 

3. The number 1,999 is said               one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine

The year 1999   is said              nineteen ninety nine

The year 2000   is said              the year two thousand

The year 2001   is said              two thousand and one

The year 2015   is said              two thousand and fifteen or twenty fifteen

1,000,000          is said              a million or ten to the power six

1,000,000,000   is said              a billion or ten to the power nine

 

Say the following: 1) It’s got 1001 different uses. 2) Profits will have doubled by the year 2000. 3) You are one in 1,000,000! 4) No, that’s 2,000,000,000 not 2,000,000!

 

 

Squares, cubes and roots

10²                                                               is ten squared

10³                                                               is ten cubed

√10                                                              is the square root of ten.

 

5. We usually give telephone and fax numbers as individual digits:

01273 736344                oh one two seven three, seven three six three four four

344                                 can also be said as three double four

44 26 77                         double four two six double seven

777                                 can be said as seven double seven or seven seven seven

 

6.  Notice the way of speaking about exchange rates:

How many francs are there to the dollar?  How many francs per dollar did you get? The current rate is 205 pesetas to the pound.   

 

 

Fractions

Fractions are mostly like ordinal numbers (fifth, sixth, twenty third etc.)

A third      1/5 - a fifth    1/6 - a sixth

Notice, however, the following:

1/2 - a half        1/4 - a quarter      3/4 - three quarters    3½ - three and a half

   

Calculating

10 + 4 = 14                     ten plus four is fourteen

                                       ten and four equals fourteen

10 – 4 = 6                       ten minus four is six

                                       ten take away four equals six

10 Х 4 = 40                    ten times four is (equals) forty

                                       ten multiplied by four is forty

10 ÷ 4 = 2½                    ten divided by four is two and a half

 

9. When a number is used before a noun – like am adjective – it is always singular. We say:

a fifty-minute lesson           not a fifty-minute s lesson

a sixteen-week semester, a fifteen-minute walk, a twenty-pound reduction, a one and a half litre bottle.

 

Check yourself

How many of the following can you say aloud in under 1 minute?

1) 234, 567 2) 1,234, 567, 890 3) 1.234 4) 0.00234% 5) 19,999 6) In 1999 7) I think the phone number is 01227-764000. 8) He was born in 1905 and died in 1987. 9) 30 Х 25 = 750 10) 30 ÷ 25 = 1.20 11) Let’s meet in 2023. 12) I can give you 367,086,566 apples. 13) The score is 6-0 to Zenit. 14) I’ll rent room 407. 15) My salary is $ 200 a month. 16) If he was born in 1964 and decided to start working at this problem in 1998, then 34 years had passed before he began doing it. 17) Did you say 0.225 or 0.229? 18) It’s white Lamborghini Diabolo, registration number MI 234662, and it looks as if it’s doing 225 kilometers an hour! 19) Have you got a pen? Their fax number is 00 33 567 32 49. 20) 2/5 21) 2¾