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Comment by nsavage | Hacker News Reader

This is excellent stuff, I am going to be spending a lot of time on this.

My absolute favourite Canadianism is how, on wikipedia, the 401 (major highway that goes through Toronto) is "colloquially referred to as the four-oh-one" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_401).

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I'm genuinely curious what else it would be called. I live 5Kms away from it, and that's just "what it's called."

Four zero one? Or Four-Hundred and One?

I'm surprised "Four Oh [X]" is specifically a Canadianism. I would have expected it to manifest more broadly, given things like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/409_(song)

I don't really think it is...in Washington State for instance the highway through the Seattle suburbs is called "the four-oh-five" (there's a Death Cab For Cutie song about this one).

But that might be just because it's a bypass to I5/5/the 5 (depending on who you ask).

The Atlanta area code is definitely "four-oh-four" (and also the HTTP error)

I'm confused. How else would you pronounce it? Four hundred and four? Four-zero-four? That's just weird. :-)

I don't think I don't ever use "oh" for zero. FWIW, I'm from South Florida with New Jersey parents. The area code I grew up with is "three-oh-five".

I think it might be different for area codes that end in a zero - I remember 610 (Philly area, where I grew up) usually being pronounced "six-ten". On the other hand, 215 was always "two-one-five", never "two-fifteen". But I agree for those with zero in the middle, like 404 or 305.

"Four-oh-one", is equally very British to me.

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