Unrecognised French word

Post Reply New Topic

I'm trying to set up my French mobile phone voice mail. The message says (my translation) "After the tone, speak your first and last name then press DIEZZ"

What is the English translation of what phonetically sounds like "DIEZZ" ? She isn't saying douze or deux - I've tried both of those and it just beeps and carrying on waiting for me to press some other key, but I don't know which key. Pressing the star key * just disconnects without saving my recording.

Dièse should be commonly used over the phone in France. It means to use the pound sign.

"dièse" means sharp, or hash key : #

I call it a pound sign, but I suppose a hash tag would be a more common name. Oops.

Excellent! Thanks everyone. I'll have another go now.

Wow, when I studied French we had little use for hash signs. This would have flustered me as well.

To British people this is the pound sign: £

Anyway, I've now memorised that Dièse is the hash sign: #

I think growing up on the east coast of the USA makes me say some words a little differently. Well, I'm glad you now know it's a HASH sign. XD

In American usage, does your pound sign # refer to the weight, the British currency or both?

For pounds weight we (British) use the letters: Lb

I don't know the history behind the # symbol, but I know from engineering that when American units are used, often the units of pressure, PSI (pounds per square inch) are represented as the # symbol, so I suspect I've always thought it was an American shortcut for pounds (weight).

Last edited by NotaHero on 16 Jan 2014, 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

sharp # is really common in music since ... centuries

sharp (wikipedia)

In the US "lb." is typically used in writing. Some tradesmen e.g. butchers may use "#" when jotting down notes. Traditional IT people have called this a "pound" sign for decades but the usage was unfamiliar to laymen. I would say the person on the street thinks of it as a "hash" (sign) as in " hashtag".

In common language, pound means both the British currency and the weight. However, Lb also stands for pound.

If you are talking about the symbol, you can say it's the "pound key". Also, you can use it in place for saying the word "number", such as: #2 (which means number two)

I'm an ancient programmer from the UK and we only ever refereed to it as the hash sign. It appears to be one of the many differences between American English and British English.

I think the differences are cool. Sometimes confusing, but still interesting!

When I was a student many years ago, a group of American exchange students came over to my university in England and one evening out in the pub one of the American's asked the barman for some change. The barman asked "Do you want some fags?" and the look on the American's face was a picture! Before a fight erupted I explained that fags were cigarettes (usually bought from the vending machine).