NY wrote:



French falls foul of ambiguity because of its quatre-vignts notation for 80:
quatre vignts dix could be any of:

quatre-vignts-dix-huit (98)
quatre-vignts dix-huit (80 18)

A pause makes all the difference. I imagine that French speakers make a very
exaggerated pause in the second case to avoid ambiguity, whereas almost no
pause is needed between non-ambiguous pairs such as vignt-huit trente-quatre
(28 34).

The pause is almost imperceptible, but it is there. It helps in france that
all phone numbers are 10 digits long so any mistranscription is obvious.
Whereas in the UK it's not always obvious if you've dropped or gained a
digit.