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The lack of the word "and" in the number there made this parse really weirdly in my brain.
Instead of "I play with 615 giraffes", I read it as "I play with 600 15-giraffes". I don't know what a 15-giraffe is, but it sounds like it might be an unstable isotope or something.
Thanks for spelling out why this felt wrong to me
Yeah, as far as I can tell it's normal in America to say 615 as "six hundred fifteen", whereas the rest of the anglosphere would say "six hundred and fifteen".
The fact that the line break happened to be right where the word "and" was missing probably made it even harder to parse correctly.
Funny enough, I was taught that including the “and” was explicitly wrong in first grade! (American here)
Me too. I still don't know why.
TIL it's not explicitly wrong
Im American. I might read the number 615 as "six hundred fifteen" in some cases. Like if I was counting.
But I would not say "six hundred fifteen giraffes", I would say "six hundred and fifteen giraffes"
To note, we don’t say “sixhundredfifteen”, we say it more like they’re separate numbers so it’s like there’s a silent “and” in there. Sometimes its not silent and it sounds like “six hundred ‘n fifteen” with a very subtle N in there.
It may be a regional thing. I learned English while I was in the states and we learnt "six hundred and fifteen" if you're saying the digit-place words (hundred, thousand, etc), but "six fifteen" would also be correct. "Six hundred fifteen" was acceptable, but not preferred, and "six and fifteen" is not used.