{"id":8288,"date":"2023-10-12T06:33:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T21:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/?p=8288"},"modified":"2023-10-12T06:34:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T21:34:27","slug":"dial-that-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/2023\/10\/12\/dial-that-number\/","title":{"rendered":"Dial that number! – Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Mr. Allen, help me!”<\/p>\n

Last night I was downstairs about to go home, and I saw two students using the payphones. One of them was not working, but the other was ignored. Want to guess which was which?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That’s right, the lonely pink phone on the right wasn’t being used. I told them, “go use the pink one!” But, they didn’t want to. “I don’t know how!” they said.<\/p>\n

They prefered the “touch tone phone” on the left. The phone on the right is called a “rotary dial phone.” I used to have one at my grandparents’ house when I lived with them as a boy. To use it, you put your finger in the dial and spin it to make the number. If people had a lot of zeros or nines in their number it was annoying because it took so much longer to dial.<\/p>\n

But, that technology shaped the English we use with phones. The word “dial”, which is the round spinning part, is also used as a verb. For example: “Dial this number to talk to our school.” “I dialed the wrong number.”<\/p>\n

We haven’t used that technology for a long time since touch tone phones, and now cell phones, are the new standard (except for our awesome pink friend here!). I wonder how long it will take for our language to catch up to the change in technology? Perhaps it has already started, as I feel many people say “call this number” rather than “dial this number”.<\/p>\n

Anyway, next time you need to use the phone, try the pink one. It may be your only chance to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Mr. Allen, help me!” Last night I was downstairs about to go home, and I saw two students using t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8291,"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8288\/revisions\/8291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shin-ai.wakayama.jp\/hyakunin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}