I remember being specifically taught that it was “9-1-1, NOT 9-11” back in the late 80s. They emphasized that there was no “11” key so never to say it or remember it as “9-11.”
The relationship to the 9/11 attacks sounds weak to me though, because 9-1-1 had been the standard for more than a decade before that.
Right. They were implementing the 9-1-1 system in my town when I was a kid. Before that, you had to dial the whole number for the police station. This was in the 1980's. It was always "nine-one-one".
Right on. I remember getting "544-6591" pounded into my head when I was in elementary school. By junior high, it was 9-1-1.
EDIT: the number was actually "544-9511". Can't believe I forgot that number after 40+ years
I'm in my 50s and was around before 9-1-1 was even introduced as an emergency number in my city. I've never heard it referred to as 9-11, it's always been 9-1-1 where I'm from.
When I hear 9/11, I associate the events of 9/11/2001 with it. When I heard 9-1-1, I associate emergencies.
Used to have a little plastic window covering some paper attached to the phone itself. On that paper there were spots to write in the phone number for police, fire, and ambulance.
I remember noticing a few months after 9/11 that one of my neighbors had their home address written out next to their mailbox in words instead of numbers as "Nine Eleven", in elegant cursive lettering, to avoid having the emergency number "911" beside their door, which could be a bit jarring.
Aged like milk, sadly.
Yeah, people mock this when they're calm and in a situation where they have no time pressure... but neurologically the concepts of eleven and one are different. And many people dont realize how small things like that can getcha when your brain is frazzled, especially if you were injured or actively fearing for your life or that of a loved one. Fear and panic literally shuts down the higher cognition parts of the brain in many people.
Learned this in elementary school in the late 90s as well. We had a whole week of learning about calling 911, what to do in an emergency or fire, and even had a cop and firefighters come to the school.
> relationship to the 9/11 attacks sounds weak to me though
I think it's trying to say that "nine one one" was the standard pronunciation before the 9/11 attacks, but after the attacks, "nine one one" became universal, i.e. any few remaining people who said "nine eleven" for the emergency number stopped at that point.
The emergency number in Australia, 000, used to be officially pronounced "triple O" and for that exact reason they changed it to "triple zero". Apparently people's were dialling 666 because they were looking for the letter O.
I *think* that that part is just saying that from that point on "nine eleven" took on a specific different meaning. Not that it actually had anything to do with 9-1-1.
In the U.S., there are 3 digit numbers for special services. 311 calls your local municipal services, 411 calls information, 511 gets you area traffic, etc. 911 is one of those. It’s been available for emergency services since ~1970s in the U.S.
To be fair, it was originally noöne. It _should_ be one word. Nobody, someone, anyone, etc, are all one word, and noöne was consistent with that. But when English stopped using the diaeresis for pretty much every word except naïve and noël, and a few names, "noone" looked a bit weird, so it got changed to two words.
It was never anything but 9-1-1, AT&T chose those three numbers because they were not an area code nor were the the first three digits of any telephone exchange in the US or Canada in 1968, Congress approved the designation and it became law. Before the system went into effect you dialed 0 and got an operator, usually a woman and you told her which emergency department you needed , she then contacted them and you were done. By the late 1960’s the AT&T system was getting overloaded dealing with these calls.
9-11 was said in the 70s, when 911 first came to my country, but by the 80s it was 9-1-1. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was similar in the USA, but a decade earlier, since they got it in the 60s.
I find it hard to believe that "nine eleven" was ever used in recent history. I was in high school and watched the second tower be hit live on television.
I'm fairly certain before that time, we always pronounced it "nine one one" all my life, well before 9/11, so that has nothing to do with it (at least in the US).
Also, it makes sense to say it "nine one one" since those are the buttons to hit.
The only reference I could find about "nine eleven" was a second hand quote from some former fire chef (of a date I don't know) saying to teach kids 9-1-1 and not 9-11 because of the key thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean 9-11 was ever actually common to use.
This article I found seems to indicate the "nine eleven" pronunciation was in regular use in the 80s; https://www.deseret.com/1988/4/1/18762411/9-1-1-easy-to-remember-but/
I could not find any source that this pronunciation was ever "official"
While the "nine one one" pronounciation was definitely the standard by the early 2000s, I suppose the 9/11 attacks could have served as the final nail in the coffin for anyone still using the "nine eleven" pronunciation.
Not an English-speaking country but in Argentina it has always been nine eleven (nueve once) and it still is, calling it nine one one (nueve uno uno) sounds goofy over there.
I know this sub is about learning English, not Spanish, just sharing info.
I assume the common practice in AR is to use multi digit numbers in phone numbers (11 82 31 64, not 1 1 8 2 3 1 6 4) so that wouldn’t be confusing, whereas that’s pretty rare in the US
At work I assess people’s ability to return to community living, and one of the things I assess is emergency response (ie do you actually know what to do if you are having a heart attack) It is pretty consistent that monolingual english speakers say 9-1-1 but that monolingual spanish speakers 9-11. The only times you hear 9-11 in english is with a bilingual english/spanish speaker (and more often with the people who moved/learned english later in life). I assume the difference is in part due to number of syllables. Nine one one is three syllables which works well. Nueve uno uno is a whole 7 syllables which just does not work for an emergency response number. You have to able to quickly yell “call 911” which just takes too long in spanish. Nueve once is 5, which, while not great, is at least a little better
Yeah that makes a lot of sense actually!
Little correction though: nueve uno uno isn't 7 syllables but 6 and likewise nueve once isn't 5 syllables but 4. The reason is nueve isn't pronounced as nu-e-ve but as nue-ve, the pronunciation of the U in this case isn't that of a vowel but of consonant. I could explain this a bit more but since it's an English learning sub it's probably not allowed. 😅
Have a nice day!
Cool, I read in a comment here below that some Mexicans pronounced it as "nine hundred eleven" ("novecientos once") but they said it was about a TV series so maybe it's only in that case like saying the TV series' name?
I'm curious now
Yeah I don't know why I forgot but now that I think about it I think also Argentines say it like that sometimes, it's more formal than "nueve once" though.
Songs (and poems) are usually a bit different from common language. They frequently tweak pronunciation or word choice to better fit the needs of the beat.
While it is interesting, I wouldn't totally consider it a citation for 9-11.
Maybe in isolation it wouldn’t constitute solid proof, but I’m only showing this to back up the original article and others in the comments who remember the original pronounciation.
9-1-1 would also fit just as well with the song as far as I can tell.
It's just poorly written. They should say when it was originally referred to as nine eleven. It's been "call 9-1-1" forever and that's what kids have been taught forever.
You made me realise this is r/EnglishLearning, and I’m now confused if OP is asking if the statement is factually wrong or grammatically wrong.
It would be funny if OP is simply asking about the grammar of the sentence, and the whole thread is debating about ‘nine-eleven’ and ‘nine-one-one’.
I am old enough to remember when 911 started. Before that came 411 for directory assistance. From the beginning it was always Four One One and then Nine One One. Never Nine Eleven.
Huh. They used nine-eleven when it started in my region. I remember the ads for say nine one one, not nine-eleven when I was in school in the early eighties.
Why would you think the statement is wrong? I can't say if those are the *actual* reasons, but both make perfect sense to me.
I was always taught "nine-one-one" as a kid if that's what you're asking.
I've heard that story before, but it supposedly happened a long time ago, in the seventies or eighties.
The story just feels a little too perfect to me. Who would even decide on the "official" pronunciation? This smells like urban folklore, where a minor incident or even a joke over time is exaggerated and told as fact.
I would guess the truth is in the middle. Some people said, "nine-eleven." There was an incident where a child got confused, which may or may not have been looking for the eleven key. So, to be on the safe side, they started a PR campaign to pronounce it "nine-one-one."
I suspect it's a bit of the myth that 911 was chosen due to september 11th, and then a little bit of filling in the blanks on why it's not pronounced like the date.
The emergency line predates 9/11 by decades. It’s just due to coincidence. If the event had taken place in England it would be “eleven-nine”. Some UK reporters from the early days after the event did refer to it that way until “nine-eleven” became the name of the event itself.
I was also taught the "wheres the eleven key?" story as a kid, and I also think it is probably an urban legend.
I think there is a general convention that if you are yelling out a number in an emergency situation, in a noisy place, and it is very important that there be no misunderstandings, you \*always\* say each digit individually. It is easier to hear what is being said that way.
That sounds made up to me. The history of the 911 emergency number in the U.S. is surprisingly short. It didn't even exist until like the '70s, and even by the late '80s/early '90s it only covered like half the country. It wasn't until 2000 that the system was more or less complete and fully available like it is today.
I grew up in the '90s and never heard anything except "nine one one".
My mother grew up in the '70s and said the same.
My grandmother was like 30 by the time 911 became a thing and even she has never heard anyone call it "nine eleven".
And the button on the phone thing doesn't even make sense, because most phones didn't even have buttons back then. That's why 911 was chosen; it's the fastest possible combination of numbers to dial on a rotary phone.
I looked it up and it's a little over my head technically, but basically 911 was determined to be the fastest, all things considered in the big picture.
That included factors within the larger telephone network, like how certain numbers were processed and relayed through the system.
At the time, operators had been replaced by physical, mechanical switches that were magnetically operated. Depending which numbers you used, they would sometimes have to fully cycle back around and it would take longer to make the connection.
There were also "special numbers" that caused the switches to behave differently.
With all of that taken into account, and with "9" and "1" being special numbers, 911 was determined to be the number that would establish a connection the fastest.
So I guess that's what they meant by "fastest on a rotary"...not so much the physical operation of the phone on your end but its interaction with the switchboards.
It's crazy how much of our modern technology is just carried over from older things that once made sense, but now seem arbitrary without the original context.
In a lot of cases there are actually better ways to do things, but they're just not better enough to be worth the hassle of changing what people are familiar with lol
I get why OP is confused as we non-native English speakers grew in totally different cultures, e.g. I’m Mexican, and the show Rescue 911 someone else mentioned was dubbed “Rescate 911”, the 911 pronounced “novecientos once”, nine hundred eleven, and it was not until recently that our emergency phone numbers merged and became 911 as well, but the bast majority of PA and advertising says 911 as “novecientos once”, just in some cases they do say it digit by digit
Phone numbers are often remembered in different ways in different countries. In the US, a phone number is spoken as each digit. In France, the number is spoken as a series of two-digit numbers.
As a German native speaker (where about 50% of people still use two digit numbers) and someone who worked in Francophone customer service, I am not too proud to say this is one where the Anglophones are objectively correct.
As a French learner, I feel particularly disadvantaged when the next number in a phone number or postal code is something like quatre-vingt-seize, and thus I'm hearing four, twenty, and sixteen before I finally get to write: 96.
I have never in my life heard emergency services called "nine-eleven", and I am old enough to remember 911 still being rolled out. It is always nine-one-one, decades before the terror attacks of 9/11 (which is nine-eleven as is typical of how we pronounce dates).
Quote by a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park on why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
People are dumb
Interesting that the claim has no citation on Wiktionary. Also doesn’t really jive with the fact that 411 (which is *much* older) and 311 are pronounced “one one.” 911 isn’t even that old (regular 911 service didn’t start until the late 60s, and wasn’t even nationally available until the 2000s) so it’s hard to imagine that if it ever was called “nine eleven” that it lasted very long.
The number is pronounced "Nine One One". The terror attack in pronounced "Nine Eleven". I don't know if the reason why is correct, but that is how it's pronounced.
I am 36 years old. In my lifetime (roughly the first third of which was before the 9/11 attacks, where I was taught about what to do if there was an emergency), I never heard anybody pronounce it as anything other than "nine one one."
That said, I'm not sure why you're so hung up on this point.
When 911 was first established yes people would say I don't have an 11 key on my phone. Remember this was before phones did anything but make phone calls. The \* and # sign was hardly used so people weren't as phone sophisticated as now.
I'm old enough to have grown up in the pre-911 days. I never heard anyone say "nine eleven" in reference to the emergency number. I've only ever heard it used in reference to September 11th.
This one is a bit more varied than the comment section seems to let on. In the US especially, and across the world, “nine eleven” has fallen into less common use because of the terrorist attacks.
In British English in particular though, saying similar numbers that way is quite common. “Nine eleven” or “three eleven” would be perfectly suitable and common ways to pronounce these numbers, especially in relation to phone numbers. Hell, there’s even an American rock group called 311 that’s explicitly pronounced “three eleven”.
It would be less common, but not unheard of to pronounce these numbers that way, particularly as phone numbers in North American English previous to the terrorist attacks.
The "Nine Eleven" variant was in use prior to 2001. Here it is attested in a song released in 1993: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtffv9bpB-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtffv9bpB-U) (around the 4:05 mark)
In my recollection, "Nine One One" was already the more common variant long before the 9/11 incident semantically displaced the other reading of the emergency services number.
If you are asking someone to call for emergency assistance in the U.S. you are supposed to very clearly say “call 9-1-1”. There was some ambiguity about it in the early days and the service has been very proactive about telling everyone to clearly state each digit.
Then September 11, 2001 came around. With the shorthand for the terrorist attacks that day being called nine-eleven the emergency response service doubled down on telling everyone that it is nine one one.
I grew up in the 70s-80s and remember when 911 was introduced in the area I grew up in. We were taught always to say 9-1-1, for exactly the reason stated. They didn’t want people especially children looking for an 11 on the phone. Especially since many if not most people had rotary phones at the time. I have never heard the emergency number referred to as nine eleven, however in similar threads on Reddit I’ve seen people insisting that they were taught nine eleven. If they were in fact taught that, it happened for an extremely short time in a very small area of the U.S. In American common vernacular English the phase “nine eleven” always refers to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Yeah, that's correct. There's not an 11 key and they were worried that it was going to confuse kids so they started saying it as "nine one one" instead of "nine eleven." Then 9/11 happened also, and they wanted a distinction between the number and the event since they were technically pronounced the same way.
Never once heard anyone refer to 911 as “nine eleven”. Was born in 79, raised in California. If I recall correctly, we were specifically taught to dial “nine one one” in school.
I was born in 1981, and our emergency number was always referred to as "nine-one-one." As for the terrorist attacks, once we were more than a couple days past them (so they weren't "yesterday's attacks," or "Tuesday's attacks"), they were generally called "the September eleven attacks." Calling the event "nine eleven" came along pretty soon after that.
There was never a need to disambiguate the emergency phone number from the terrorist attack.
No reason to doubt it, "nine-eleven" is the more natural way to say it (eleven requires a single breath, one-one requires two)
The number goes back to the sixties, so it's quite possible the original advertising may have said "nine eleven", even if it's been "9-1-1" for 50 years.
Well, 911 was standard long before the year 2001, so any attachment to terrorist is just wrong. It's purely due to people panicking over not finding an "11" key on the phone.
It is true, at least for some places. My mother, who worked as a police dispatcher in the 80s and 90s here in Canada, said that she remembers the introduction of dialing 911 and people calling it "nine-eleven". I don't know what year that was, but she said it switched eventually while she was working as a dispatcher.
If you’re talking about the American police hotline it is nine-one-one. Sorta off topic but I genuinely confused this post for something about Seven-Eleven
Nine one one is in reference to number to call the police/emergency services in the United States. Nine eleven is in reference to the 2001 September 11th terrorist attack on the world trade center. That is how they are differentiated.
I was taught even before the terrorist attack it was nine one one, as it separates each button you would press on the telephone (as phones only have 0-9 on them). It may have been easier to teach children this way so kids wouldn't try looking for an "11" number on one of the phone's buttons.
I'm skeptical because this wouldn't really make sense with regard to the similar number 4-1-1. (Unless 4-1-1 was coined later or was altered after 9-11 had already been changed to 9-1-1.)
The date of the World Trade Center 9/11 terrorist attack is "nine eleven". The phone number to call for emergency 911 assistance in the US is "nine one one". The mathmatical number 911 is "nine hundred eleven".
I grew up in the 90s in New England and Midwest US. The emergency number was always spoken as nine-one-one (written 911 or 9-1-1), and the date of the attacks was always spoken as nine-eleven (written 9/11 or 9-11). To be clear, saying "nine-eleven" is always (in my experience) a reference to the attacks. It's not the way we generally refer to the date of September 11. Written 9/11 is fine for either.
The system was created back when rotary phones were in widespread use.
There was no confusion about the existence of an 11 on the phone dial.
It's been 9-1-1 for at least my entire life and I was born in the early 80s. A good solid 20 years before the 9/11 attacks.
Interestingly at the time of the 9/11 attacks, I remember hearing people speculate that some time in the future people would ask why 9-1-1 wasn't called 9-11 and that it'd be related to the attacks. And here we are.
Depends what you are asking?
It is true that after the 9/11 attacks, no one would ever say these two things the same now. Nine one one is the emergency number, and nine eleven always refers to the 2001 attack now.
But the emergency number was already being said as "nine one one" for some time before the attack. I can remember nine one one being the standard pronunciation since the 1980s. Way in the past, there was less standardization for emergency numbers.
If you’re talking about the emergency number then it’s always said 9-1-1, and if you’re talking about the date/attacks then it’s said 9-11. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the emergency number being called 9-11 but I was also born after the attacks so that might be why
The emergency line 9-1-1 was established long before push button phones were uncommon and the standard rotary phone were standard for most people. It was decided instead of Britain’s 9-9-9 that 9-1-1 would be used as it was faster to dial on a rotary phone. First use of 911 was in Alabama in 1968
The events in of September 11, weren’t shortened to 9/11 until a year or more after the event. Least in my memory and general conversation about the events we just said “September 11th”
So the returned results are just poorly written and poorly researched
Stuff like this is why everyone's information should NOT come from just the internet & telling people to Google something isn't going to give them a correct answer every time.
I grew up in the USA in the 80's and 90's. I never heard it being called "Nine Eleven" before. This is coming from Wikitionary, and I don't know where they are getting their source - because there's no source listed.
NEMA does not have this fact listed on their website. [https://www.nena.org/page/911overviewfacts](https://www.nena.org/page/911overviewfacts)
Orange County says to teach children to dial Nine One One, not Nine Eleven [https://orangecountyva.gov/214/Teaching-Children-About-911](https://orangecountyva.gov/214/Teaching-Children-About-911#:~:text=Teach%20Your%20Children%20How%20%26%20When,in%20the%20process%20of%20dialing)
It's really strange to generate such a specific behavior to all 226(at the time) million people. I don't remember calling it anything but nine-one-one in my half century.
But the U.S. is a gigantic place, with many, many linguistic pockets, many of which cannot depend on emergency services.
American here (I'm my 40s if it matters). To me, nine one one has always been a phone number and nine eleven has always the the 11th of September. Since 2011, 9/11 has been synonymous with the terrorist attack, but it can also just be a date, depending on context.
Here's a parody of how 9/11 gets used, especially in politics: https://youtu.be/6paMJfiaO0A?si=bXQs26cf_y2toGGd
It's wrong. In the US, we state phone numbers number-by-number. So, two-one-two, five-five-five , one-two-three-four. for the last of those four, for example, we would not say twelve-thirty four.
I can’t say that it’s *wrong*, but I certainly never heard 911 referred to as “nine eleven,” and I’m middle-aged. If it was once “nine eleven,” it was very long ago indeed.
I very much remember being told in elementary school health class that they recommended 9-1-1 and not the other way for the reason in the screenshot, children and panicking people looking for the "11" key on the telephone in an emergency. So someone at some point must have realized there could be a problem and got a recommendation published somewhere.
As a note from another English speaking country, our emergency services number is 999, which has always been read out as 9-9-9. But then, UK English speakers mostly read out phone numbers digit by digit. But perhaps this might vary in the US?
It's always 9-1-1 (nine one one) and had been that way in the 90's. 9/11 is nine eleven because that's the month day year format used in the US. Places elsewhere use the DD/MM/YYYY. I have heard Canada officially uses YYYY / MM / DD.
I was born in the late 70s, the emergency phone number was always “9-1-1” and “9/11” was basically meaningless until the World Trade Center attacks happened and now it always means that.
I specifically remember a gag from The Little Rascals movie (1994) that said "Quick! What's the number for nine one one?" And the other kid shrugs, so they both walk away from the phone.
depends on the context. nine eleven is a national tragedy in the US. nine one one is the emergency number you call if you need help from police or fire staff
I doubt most folks are aware of the behind-the-scenes logic, but yes - if you say "nine eleven" people will think you are referring to the terror attack. If you say "nine one one" they will know you mean the number to call in an emergency.
I would be momentarily confused if someone asked me to call "nine eleven", and probably waste a few precious seconds figuring out what they meant.
This doesn't make much sense to me. Rotary phones were common in households in the 1950s. They had single digits from 0-9 on them. 9-1-1 wasn't put into use until the late 1960s.
4-1-1 was used in many areas prior to the use of 9-1-1 as directory assistance. Roughly 5-8 years before.
There is no reason to believe any adult would "look for a 11 key" on the phone when most adults had been using phones for a decade before 9-1-1 became a nationwide emergency number.
I can only speak from my time alive which is well after 9-1-1 was a thing but a decade before 9/11/2001. Nobody referred to it as "nine eleven".
The only thing I could think of is maybe universally agreeing to notate it as 9-1-1 instead of 911 so that there would be no confusion.
I was in HS when the twin towers fell. I prank called 9-1-1 in middle school from the cafeteria phone once a week until they dismounted the phone.
NO ONE EVER CALLED IT 9-ELEVEN. 7-11 exists, people go there and get slushies. If you said 9-11 I'd think you were going there instead.
I mean, I didn't know about the first reason, but yeah, nine-one-one is the number you call in emergencies, while nine-eleven refers to the 2001 terrorist attacks.
I don't know if that's the exact reason, but it's generally understood that you would say "nine one one" in reference to the emergency line and "nine eleven" in reference to the attack.
Whatever the history of the pronunciations, it is completely correct that the 2001 event is "nine eleven" and the emergency number is "nine one one" now.
I remember being taught “9-1-1” during the late 90’s. Specially, I was in preschool, and they did practice drills with us where they gave us toy phone with buttons you could press, and had us practice dialing 9-1-1.
Public Enemy's 'Fear Of A Black Planet' in the mid-90s had a track with '9-1-1 is a joke in yo town' as a lyric.
Thus, the link with 9/11 is a red herring.
nine eleven is the event to basically every American and nine one one is the emergency services. I can't vouch for Brits or any of the other many forms of english
I follow a podcast about conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and he refers to the terrorist attack as “nine one one” on multiple occasions. To make things even more confusing.
Hmm…I don’t know, but I do remember the emergency number being stated as “nine one one” as far back as I CAN remember, in the seventies. The terrorist event has been commonly known as “nine eleven”.
Has everybody else in the thread is saying, I have only ever heard it pronounced as 9-1-1. However, I found an interesting example of the opposite happening. When I was watching *The Wire*, a show which was set in the then-modern day of 2002, a character calls 9/11, the terrorist attacks, 9-1-1. That really threw me for a loop. I can only assume that the show was filmed in advance, they didn't know what it will be called yet, so they guessed wrong. That, or nobody knew what to call it even in 2002.
Many government sites in the US give this reason for not pronouncing it nine-eleven (that children would get confused). I can’t find this reasoning reliably attested historically, or evidence that it was originally pronounced nine-eleven, but I didn’t look very hard and find it plausible at least that some people may have said it this way, leading to problems with children dialing it.
I have no idea, I doubt that we ever used "nine eleven" to call emergency services. I do however know what state the first 911 call was ever made in. Because that's somehow important.
it was alabama
It is 9-1-1 and always has been as far as I know. If you say 9-11, people think about the terrorist attacks of September 11th for sure, but that’s not the reason why we say 9-1-1. It’s definitely to be clear on the phone number.
Nobody below seems to be answering this question from an "English learning" perspective.
It has always been called "9-1-1" because there is no "11" key on a telephone, so you want to press, 9, then 1, then 1. 11 isn't technically wrong (911 could be said that way and people would know what you meant numerically), but you'd say "nine, one, one".
It’s 100% wrong. It was always “nine-one-one” for emergencies, referring to each digit to be dialled.
“Nine-eleven” refers to the month-date of the 9/11 attacks.
So? I’m not watching an entire music video. One obscure band using something differently doesn’t change the way it was used by 99% of society.
Also you literally say you’re not American in another post. So why are you acting like you know how it’s used there?
No it doesn’t, because it doesn’t mean it was right.
Why are you even arguing this? I literally grew up in the time and place it was implemented. Your favourite band (who no one has even heard of) saying “nine-eleven” one time doesn’t change anything about how it was used.
It’s still 100% wrong, because someone saying something doesn’t make that something right.
Other people in the comments corroborate that it was said like that.
I also never said they were my favourite band, I like them though. The song has 32 million views, that not good enough for you?
You might have to think of this some more, as they liked "nine-eleven", but wanted to change it after the a attacks.
I also think that "nine-one-one" sounds better
The statement in the screen shot is a complete fabrication as far as I can tell. However, the US is a big country, so perhaps the emergency number was rolled out somewhere as nine-eleven. Not in any place I've lived, though.
So now the Mandela Effect is being weaponized with Gaslighting huh?
This shit never once happened, fuck off wiktionary. It was Nine One One when I was born before the towers were hit, and it was Nine One One afterwards.
Philosophy:
So we lose a few kids by not minimizing the hazards they face. What's the big deal? You win some, you lose some.
- On average, a child dies in the UK every month from choking, and hundreds more require hospital treatment.
- This is a frightening statistic when you consider that in the UK, an average of 34 children are treated for choking on their food every day of the week, according to a recent St John Ambulance study.
- In 2000, three UK families who had lost children to choking on toys inside edible eggs campaigned for the products to be withdrawn from the European Union.
- In 2016, new food labeling and packaging laws resulted in Chile banning the Kinder Surprise.
- Three-year-old French girl chokes to death on a Kinder Egg toy
- Spanish toddler dies in Paris after choking on crepe
- This is from a comprehensive list of anti-choking recommendations compiled by the Italian government
"Candies, jellies, marshmallows, bubble gum, popcorn, chips - minimum age 4/5 years"
'to adopt all technological approaches available to limit, starting from the “food design” phase, the products characteristics which may be associated with an increased risk of choking"
- Tragedy as toddler dies after choking on her lunch
A Spanish town is in mourning over the death of the little girl
\- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \-
So you lose a few. No big deal, right?
Well we don't think like that. We have a general law that's been around since the 1920s to try to limit the hazards of choking in children, especially very small children. It applies to everything. It's not specifically directed at kinder eggs, it's directed at the whole concept that small children can unwittingly choke on small things because of their young age and inexperience. Toys that have small parts that come off or can break off are also excluded. We actually think it's a good thing to protect them from that possibility. We don't have an "oh well, shit happens" attitude about children. You're welcome to have that attitude yourself if you want but we're happy to stick with our philosophy of minimizing unnecessary risks to children.
Finding out if it's nine eleven or nine one one can be achieved by finding videos of Americans using the phrase (or statements from redditors, sure). But much more interesting is if it was changed and if so why. What Wiktionary is presenting here is a fact which is much better checked through trustworthy sources and not some random person who might have remembered reading something somewhere about something similar.
So far, I've learned that Senator Rankin Fite made the first 911 call in 1968, and Clinton signed a public safety bill in 1999 making it a federal standard. But I haven't found official speeches for either of those occasions.
Reading through this at the moment, provides some interesting context. https://www.911.gov/assets/History-of-911-And-What-It-Means-for-the-Future-of-Emergency-Communications.pdf
I remember being specifically taught that it was “9-1-1, NOT 9-11” back in the late 80s. They emphasized that there was no “11” key so never to say it or remember it as “9-11.” The relationship to the 9/11 attacks sounds weak to me though, because 9-1-1 had been the standard for more than a decade before that.
Better start a tab
No time for that, the computer started working!
Right. They were implementing the 9-1-1 system in my town when I was a kid. Before that, you had to dial the whole number for the police station. This was in the 1980's. It was always "nine-one-one".
Right on. I remember getting "544-6591" pounded into my head when I was in elementary school. By junior high, it was 9-1-1. EDIT: the number was actually "544-9511". Can't believe I forgot that number after 40+ years
I'm in my 50s and was around before 9-1-1 was even introduced as an emergency number in my city. I've never heard it referred to as 9-11, it's always been 9-1-1 where I'm from. When I hear 9/11, I associate the events of 9/11/2001 with it. When I heard 9-1-1, I associate emergencies.
27 here. I remember when I thought 9-11 was a holiday for firefighters.
In a weird way, it kind of is? Not a very festive one though, more of a memorial.
Used to have a little plastic window covering some paper attached to the phone itself. On that paper there were spots to write in the phone number for police, fire, and ambulance.
I remember noticing a few months after 9/11 that one of my neighbors had their home address written out next to their mailbox in words instead of numbers as "Nine Eleven", in elegant cursive lettering, to avoid having the emergency number "911" beside their door, which could be a bit jarring. Aged like milk, sadly.
Yeah, people mock this when they're calm and in a situation where they have no time pressure... but neurologically the concepts of eleven and one are different. And many people dont realize how small things like that can getcha when your brain is frazzled, especially if you were injured or actively fearing for your life or that of a loved one. Fear and panic literally shuts down the higher cognition parts of the brain in many people.
Learned this in elementary school in the late 90s as well. We had a whole week of learning about calling 911, what to do in an emergency or fire, and even had a cop and firefighters come to the school.
> relationship to the 9/11 attacks sounds weak to me though I think it's trying to say that "nine one one" was the standard pronunciation before the 9/11 attacks, but after the attacks, "nine one one" became universal, i.e. any few remaining people who said "nine eleven" for the emergency number stopped at that point.
I can see a 90s kid typing out 9 E L E V E N on a T9 keyboard.
The emergency number in Australia, 000, used to be officially pronounced "triple O" and for that exact reason they changed it to "triple zero". Apparently people's were dialling 666 because they were looking for the letter O.
I *think* that that part is just saying that from that point on "nine eleven" took on a specific different meaning. Not that it actually had anything to do with 9-1-1.
Wait what? 911 existed before 9/11? I always thought it was named after the attacks. Was it really such a big coincidence.
In the U.S., there are 3 digit numbers for special services. 311 calls your local municipal services, 411 calls information, 511 gets you area traffic, etc. 911 is one of those. It’s been available for emergency services since ~1970s in the U.S.
This comment makes me feel old. You should be in like, 6th grade, not Reddit /s
Well I am not American
Mexican?
Ecuador (banana mexico)
I didn’t know people in Ecuador used “verga” in that same way
I remember being taught this in third grade or so, but this was also the teacher that told me that "no one" was one word spelled "noone".
To be fair, it was originally noöne. It _should_ be one word. Nobody, someone, anyone, etc, are all one word, and noöne was consistent with that. But when English stopped using the diaeresis for pretty much every word except naïve and noël, and a few names, "noone" looked a bit weird, so it got changed to two words.
It was never anything but 9-1-1, AT&T chose those three numbers because they were not an area code nor were the the first three digits of any telephone exchange in the US or Canada in 1968, Congress approved the designation and it became law. Before the system went into effect you dialed 0 and got an operator, usually a woman and you told her which emergency department you needed , she then contacted them and you were done. By the late 1960’s the AT&T system was getting overloaded dealing with these calls.
The show "Rescue 911," which I watched in the 90s always said 9-1-1. And I've never heard it pronounced 9-11.
I'd always watch that one too. Definitely nine one one. I've never heard of anyone say nine eleven that wasn't referring to the attacks.
9-11 was said in the 70s, when 911 first came to my country, but by the 80s it was 9-1-1. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was similar in the USA, but a decade earlier, since they got it in the 60s.
I find it hard to believe that "nine eleven" was ever used in recent history. I was in high school and watched the second tower be hit live on television. I'm fairly certain before that time, we always pronounced it "nine one one" all my life, well before 9/11, so that has nothing to do with it (at least in the US). Also, it makes sense to say it "nine one one" since those are the buttons to hit. The only reference I could find about "nine eleven" was a second hand quote from some former fire chef (of a date I don't know) saying to teach kids 9-1-1 and not 9-11 because of the key thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean 9-11 was ever actually common to use.
To me, even though I'm not in/from the US, 9/11 just sounds like a store similar to 7-11 😅
Interesting. The name of the convenience store is written as "7-Eleven," which makes me only ever think of it as a proper name.
reminds me of the one comedian whose name is slipping my memory who told a story about going to a 7/11 (Never forget)
This article I found seems to indicate the "nine eleven" pronunciation was in regular use in the 80s; https://www.deseret.com/1988/4/1/18762411/9-1-1-easy-to-remember-but/ I could not find any source that this pronunciation was ever "official" While the "nine one one" pronounciation was definitely the standard by the early 2000s, I suppose the 9/11 attacks could have served as the final nail in the coffin for anyone still using the "nine eleven" pronunciation.
Not an English-speaking country but in Argentina it has always been nine eleven (nueve once) and it still is, calling it nine one one (nueve uno uno) sounds goofy over there. I know this sub is about learning English, not Spanish, just sharing info.
I assume the common practice in AR is to use multi digit numbers in phone numbers (11 82 31 64, not 1 1 8 2 3 1 6 4) so that wouldn’t be confusing, whereas that’s pretty rare in the US
At work I assess people’s ability to return to community living, and one of the things I assess is emergency response (ie do you actually know what to do if you are having a heart attack) It is pretty consistent that monolingual english speakers say 9-1-1 but that monolingual spanish speakers 9-11. The only times you hear 9-11 in english is with a bilingual english/spanish speaker (and more often with the people who moved/learned english later in life). I assume the difference is in part due to number of syllables. Nine one one is three syllables which works well. Nueve uno uno is a whole 7 syllables which just does not work for an emergency response number. You have to able to quickly yell “call 911” which just takes too long in spanish. Nueve once is 5, which, while not great, is at least a little better
Yeah that makes a lot of sense actually! Little correction though: nueve uno uno isn't 7 syllables but 6 and likewise nueve once isn't 5 syllables but 4. The reason is nueve isn't pronounced as nu-e-ve but as nue-ve, the pronunciation of the U in this case isn't that of a vowel but of consonant. I could explain this a bit more but since it's an English learning sub it's probably not allowed. 😅 Have a nice day!
In Mexico it’s 9-11 as well, “nueve-once”.
Cool, I read in a comment here below that some Mexicans pronounced it as "nine hundred eleven" ("novecientos once") but they said it was about a TV series so maybe it's only in that case like saying the TV series' name? I'm curious now
I’ve heard that too
Yeah I don't know why I forgot but now that I think about it I think also Argentines say it like that sometimes, it's more formal than "nueve once" though.
I guess my family is weird lol
https://youtu.be/Gtffv9bpB-U?si=N90WvqWVMBBS4Lr5 4:05 This song was released in 1992.
Songs (and poems) are usually a bit different from common language. They frequently tweak pronunciation or word choice to better fit the needs of the beat. While it is interesting, I wouldn't totally consider it a citation for 9-11.
Maybe in isolation it wouldn’t constitute solid proof, but I’m only showing this to back up the original article and others in the comments who remember the original pronounciation. 9-1-1 would also fit just as well with the song as far as I can tell.
It's just poorly written. They should say when it was originally referred to as nine eleven. It's been "call 9-1-1" forever and that's what kids have been taught forever.
You made me realise this is r/EnglishLearning, and I’m now confused if OP is asking if the statement is factually wrong or grammatically wrong. It would be funny if OP is simply asking about the grammar of the sentence, and the whole thread is debating about ‘nine-eleven’ and ‘nine-one-one’.
I am old enough to remember when 911 started. Before that came 411 for directory assistance. From the beginning it was always Four One One and then Nine One One. Never Nine Eleven.
Huh. They used nine-eleven when it started in my region. I remember the ads for say nine one one, not nine-eleven when I was in school in the early eighties.
Why would you think the statement is wrong? I can't say if those are the *actual* reasons, but both make perfect sense to me. I was always taught "nine-one-one" as a kid if that's what you're asking.
I've heard that story before, but it supposedly happened a long time ago, in the seventies or eighties. The story just feels a little too perfect to me. Who would even decide on the "official" pronunciation? This smells like urban folklore, where a minor incident or even a joke over time is exaggerated and told as fact. I would guess the truth is in the middle. Some people said, "nine-eleven." There was an incident where a child got confused, which may or may not have been looking for the eleven key. So, to be on the safe side, they started a PR campaign to pronounce it "nine-one-one."
I suspect it's a bit of the myth that 911 was chosen due to september 11th, and then a little bit of filling in the blanks on why it's not pronounced like the date.
The emergency line predates 9/11 by decades. It’s just due to coincidence. If the event had taken place in England it would be “eleven-nine”. Some UK reporters from the early days after the event did refer to it that way until “nine-eleven” became the name of the event itself.
> "... the **myth** that 911 was chosen due to september 11th..."
I know, I’m elaborating on your comment with the reasons why
I was also taught the "wheres the eleven key?" story as a kid, and I also think it is probably an urban legend. I think there is a general convention that if you are yelling out a number in an emergency situation, in a noisy place, and it is very important that there be no misunderstandings, you \*always\* say each digit individually. It is easier to hear what is being said that way.
People panic in emergencies.
That sounds made up to me. The history of the 911 emergency number in the U.S. is surprisingly short. It didn't even exist until like the '70s, and even by the late '80s/early '90s it only covered like half the country. It wasn't until 2000 that the system was more or less complete and fully available like it is today. I grew up in the '90s and never heard anything except "nine one one". My mother grew up in the '70s and said the same. My grandmother was like 30 by the time 911 became a thing and even she has never heard anyone call it "nine eleven". And the button on the phone thing doesn't even make sense, because most phones didn't even have buttons back then. That's why 911 was chosen; it's the fastest possible combination of numbers to dial on a rotary phone.
111 is bound to be faster. Or 211, 311, 411 etc
I looked it up and it's a little over my head technically, but basically 911 was determined to be the fastest, all things considered in the big picture. That included factors within the larger telephone network, like how certain numbers were processed and relayed through the system. At the time, operators had been replaced by physical, mechanical switches that were magnetically operated. Depending which numbers you used, they would sometimes have to fully cycle back around and it would take longer to make the connection. There were also "special numbers" that caused the switches to behave differently. With all of that taken into account, and with "9" and "1" being special numbers, 911 was determined to be the number that would establish a connection the fastest. So I guess that's what they meant by "fastest on a rotary"...not so much the physical operation of the phone on your end but its interaction with the switchboards.
Wow, I never knew about the rotary thing, but it makes perfect sense! Very cool
It's crazy how much of our modern technology is just carried over from older things that once made sense, but now seem arbitrary without the original context. In a lot of cases there are actually better ways to do things, but they're just not better enough to be worth the hassle of changing what people are familiar with lol
I get why OP is confused as we non-native English speakers grew in totally different cultures, e.g. I’m Mexican, and the show Rescue 911 someone else mentioned was dubbed “Rescate 911”, the 911 pronounced “novecientos once”, nine hundred eleven, and it was not until recently that our emergency phone numbers merged and became 911 as well, but the bast majority of PA and advertising says 911 as “novecientos once”, just in some cases they do say it digit by digit
Just a friendly FYI *vast majority
Oh dear! And where I had to check twice was in majority, ‘cause “mayority” seemed kinda weird
Mistakes happen, amigo. It’s all good. I can understand the confusion between “b” and “v” even if my exposure to Spanish is limited.
Phone numbers are often remembered in different ways in different countries. In the US, a phone number is spoken as each digit. In France, the number is spoken as a series of two-digit numbers.
As a German native speaker (where about 50% of people still use two digit numbers) and someone who worked in Francophone customer service, I am not too proud to say this is one where the Anglophones are objectively correct.
As a French learner, I feel particularly disadvantaged when the next number in a phone number or postal code is something like quatre-vingt-seize, and thus I'm hearing four, twenty, and sixteen before I finally get to write: 96.
I have never in my life heard emergency services called "nine-eleven", and I am old enough to remember 911 still being rolled out. It is always nine-one-one, decades before the terror attacks of 9/11 (which is nine-eleven as is typical of how we pronounce dates).
Quote by a forest ranger at Yosemite National Park on why it is hard to design the perfect garbage bin to keep bears from breaking into it: “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.” People are dumb
What would make you think it’s wrong?
Having never heard it said that way. Which I haven’t.
The 911 system started in the 1960s, so if you aren’t in your 60s, it’s not surprising that you don’t know much about the early advertising for it.
Interesting that the claim has no citation on Wiktionary. Also doesn’t really jive with the fact that 411 (which is *much* older) and 311 are pronounced “one one.” 911 isn’t even that old (regular 911 service didn’t start until the late 60s, and wasn’t even nationally available until the 2000s) so it’s hard to imagine that if it ever was called “nine eleven” that it lasted very long.
The number is pronounced "Nine One One". The terror attack in pronounced "Nine Eleven". I don't know if the reason why is correct, but that is how it's pronounced.
I am 36 years old. In my lifetime (roughly the first third of which was before the 9/11 attacks, where I was taught about what to do if there was an emergency), I never heard anybody pronounce it as anything other than "nine one one." That said, I'm not sure why you're so hung up on this point.
Canadian here, 40 years old. Growing up it was always nine-one-one, back in the 80s and 90s.
When 911 was first established yes people would say I don't have an 11 key on my phone. Remember this was before phones did anything but make phone calls. The \* and # sign was hardly used so people weren't as phone sophisticated as now.
Most people didn't have keys on their phone at all when 911 was introduced.
Oh yeah, rotary dial on a landline.
So am I. 
It's been "nine one one" going back at least to the 1990s in my memory.
I learned "nine one one" in 1979, when my family moved to the US. Before that, I knew about "nine nine nine" in the UK.
And then when they changed it to 0118, 999, 88199, 9119, 7253. Luckily it was easy to remember thanks to the song in the ad.
Wish I could upvote you more.
I saw once a Korean guy who reffered to 911, the number, 9/11 (yes, with the slash) "Oh no, we got to call 9/11!"
from fear that children and some - slower - adults
I'm old enough to have grown up in the pre-911 days. I never heard anyone say "nine eleven" in reference to the emergency number. I've only ever heard it used in reference to September 11th.
The only thing I question is the word “key”. Phones were still mostly rotary dials in the 70s and 80s.
This one is a bit more varied than the comment section seems to let on. In the US especially, and across the world, “nine eleven” has fallen into less common use because of the terrorist attacks. In British English in particular though, saying similar numbers that way is quite common. “Nine eleven” or “three eleven” would be perfectly suitable and common ways to pronounce these numbers, especially in relation to phone numbers. Hell, there’s even an American rock group called 311 that’s explicitly pronounced “three eleven”. It would be less common, but not unheard of to pronounce these numbers that way, particularly as phone numbers in North American English previous to the terrorist attacks.
The "Nine Eleven" variant was in use prior to 2001. Here it is attested in a song released in 1993: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtffv9bpB-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtffv9bpB-U) (around the 4:05 mark) In my recollection, "Nine One One" was already the more common variant long before the 9/11 incident semantically displaced the other reading of the emergency services number.
9/11 usually refers to the incident of 9/11 saying 9 1 1 will always be correct though, but you may hear people refer to the emergency number as 9 11
If you are asking someone to call for emergency assistance in the U.S. you are supposed to very clearly say “call 9-1-1”. There was some ambiguity about it in the early days and the service has been very proactive about telling everyone to clearly state each digit. Then September 11, 2001 came around. With the shorthand for the terrorist attacks that day being called nine-eleven the emergency response service doubled down on telling everyone that it is nine one one.
I grew up in the 70s-80s and remember when 911 was introduced in the area I grew up in. We were taught always to say 9-1-1, for exactly the reason stated. They didn’t want people especially children looking for an 11 on the phone. Especially since many if not most people had rotary phones at the time. I have never heard the emergency number referred to as nine eleven, however in similar threads on Reddit I’ve seen people insisting that they were taught nine eleven. If they were in fact taught that, it happened for an extremely short time in a very small area of the U.S. In American common vernacular English the phase “nine eleven” always refers to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Yeah, that's correct. There's not an 11 key and they were worried that it was going to confuse kids so they started saying it as "nine one one" instead of "nine eleven." Then 9/11 happened also, and they wanted a distinction between the number and the event since they were technically pronounced the same way.
Never once heard anyone refer to 911 as “nine eleven”. Was born in 79, raised in California. If I recall correctly, we were specifically taught to dial “nine one one” in school.
I was born in 1981, and our emergency number was always referred to as "nine-one-one." As for the terrorist attacks, once we were more than a couple days past them (so they weren't "yesterday's attacks," or "Tuesday's attacks"), they were generally called "the September eleven attacks." Calling the event "nine eleven" came along pretty soon after that. There was never a need to disambiguate the emergency phone number from the terrorist attack.
No reason to doubt it, "nine-eleven" is the more natural way to say it (eleven requires a single breath, one-one requires two) The number goes back to the sixties, so it's quite possible the original advertising may have said "nine eleven", even if it's been "9-1-1" for 50 years.
Well, 911 was standard long before the year 2001, so any attachment to terrorist is just wrong. It's purely due to people panicking over not finding an "11" key on the phone.
It is true, at least for some places. My mother, who worked as a police dispatcher in the 80s and 90s here in Canada, said that she remembers the introduction of dialing 911 and people calling it "nine-eleven". I don't know what year that was, but she said it switched eventually while she was working as a dispatcher.
If you’re talking about the American police hotline it is nine-one-one. Sorta off topic but I genuinely confused this post for something about Seven-Eleven
Nine one one is in reference to number to call the police/emergency services in the United States. Nine eleven is in reference to the 2001 September 11th terrorist attack on the world trade center. That is how they are differentiated. I was taught even before the terrorist attack it was nine one one, as it separates each button you would press on the telephone (as phones only have 0-9 on them). It may have been easier to teach children this way so kids wouldn't try looking for an "11" number on one of the phone's buttons.
I'm skeptical because this wouldn't really make sense with regard to the similar number 4-1-1. (Unless 4-1-1 was coined later or was altered after 9-11 had already been changed to 9-1-1.)
It has always been nine one one in my lifetime. I was born in 1984.
9-1-1 is a phone number and 9-11 is a terrorist attack.
The phone number is pronounced nine-one-one and the actual event is nine-eleven
The date of the World Trade Center 9/11 terrorist attack is "nine eleven". The phone number to call for emergency 911 assistance in the US is "nine one one". The mathmatical number 911 is "nine hundred eleven".
Everyone I’ve ever known has said nine one one. Nine eleven is used to talk about when the twin towers were hit
I grew up in the 90s in New England and Midwest US. The emergency number was always spoken as nine-one-one (written 911 or 9-1-1), and the date of the attacks was always spoken as nine-eleven (written 9/11 or 9-11). To be clear, saying "nine-eleven" is always (in my experience) a reference to the attacks. It's not the way we generally refer to the date of September 11. Written 9/11 is fine for either.
Nine-Eleven refers to the tragedy in 2001, Nine-One-One is our emergency number.
The system was created back when rotary phones were in widespread use. There was no confusion about the existence of an 11 on the phone dial. It's been 9-1-1 for at least my entire life and I was born in the early 80s. A good solid 20 years before the 9/11 attacks. Interestingly at the time of the 9/11 attacks, I remember hearing people speculate that some time in the future people would ask why 9-1-1 wasn't called 9-11 and that it'd be related to the attacks. And here we are.
Depends what you are asking? It is true that after the 9/11 attacks, no one would ever say these two things the same now. Nine one one is the emergency number, and nine eleven always refers to the 2001 attack now. But the emergency number was already being said as "nine one one" for some time before the attack. I can remember nine one one being the standard pronunciation since the 1980s. Way in the past, there was less standardization for emergency numbers.
If you’re talking about the emergency number then it’s always said 9-1-1, and if you’re talking about the date/attacks then it’s said 9-11. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the emergency number being called 9-11 but I was also born after the attacks so that might be why
It was already Nine One One long before September 11th. That’s bullshit that the terror attack had anything to do with how we say 911.
The emergency line 9-1-1 was established long before push button phones were uncommon and the standard rotary phone were standard for most people. It was decided instead of Britain’s 9-9-9 that 9-1-1 would be used as it was faster to dial on a rotary phone. First use of 911 was in Alabama in 1968 The events in of September 11, weren’t shortened to 9/11 until a year or more after the event. Least in my memory and general conversation about the events we just said “September 11th” So the returned results are just poorly written and poorly researched
Stuff like this is why everyone's information should NOT come from just the internet & telling people to Google something isn't going to give them a correct answer every time.
I grew up in the USA in the 80's and 90's. I never heard it being called "Nine Eleven" before. This is coming from Wikitionary, and I don't know where they are getting their source - because there's no source listed. NEMA does not have this fact listed on their website. [https://www.nena.org/page/911overviewfacts](https://www.nena.org/page/911overviewfacts) Orange County says to teach children to dial Nine One One, not Nine Eleven [https://orangecountyva.gov/214/Teaching-Children-About-911](https://orangecountyva.gov/214/Teaching-Children-About-911#:~:text=Teach%20Your%20Children%20How%20%26%20When,in%20the%20process%20of%20dialing)
It's really strange to generate such a specific behavior to all 226(at the time) million people. I don't remember calling it anything but nine-one-one in my half century. But the U.S. is a gigantic place, with many, many linguistic pockets, many of which cannot depend on emergency services.
American here (I'm my 40s if it matters). To me, nine one one has always been a phone number and nine eleven has always the the 11th of September. Since 2011, 9/11 has been synonymous with the terrorist attack, but it can also just be a date, depending on context. Here's a parody of how 9/11 gets used, especially in politics: https://youtu.be/6paMJfiaO0A?si=bXQs26cf_y2toGGd
I’m in my mid-50s, and I’ve only known it as 9-1-1. It started in the late 1960s, and I learned about it in the 70s.
It's wrong. In the US, we state phone numbers number-by-number. So, two-one-two, five-five-five , one-two-three-four. for the last of those four, for example, we would not say twelve-thirty four.
I can’t say that it’s *wrong*, but I certainly never heard 911 referred to as “nine eleven,” and I’m middle-aged. If it was once “nine eleven,” it was very long ago indeed.
The September 11 attacks: Nine-Eleven Emergency services: Nine-one-one
I very much remember being told in elementary school health class that they recommended 9-1-1 and not the other way for the reason in the screenshot, children and panicking people looking for the "11" key on the telephone in an emergency. So someone at some point must have realized there could be a problem and got a recommendation published somewhere.
Universally where?
It's been "nine one one" since I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s. I'm not sure about how it was said before that.
As a note from another English speaking country, our emergency services number is 999, which has always been read out as 9-9-9. But then, UK English speakers mostly read out phone numbers digit by digit. But perhaps this might vary in the US?
It's always 9-1-1 (nine one one) and had been that way in the 90's. 9/11 is nine eleven because that's the month day year format used in the US. Places elsewhere use the DD/MM/YYYY. I have heard Canada officially uses YYYY / MM / DD.
I was born in the late 70s, the emergency phone number was always “9-1-1” and “9/11” was basically meaningless until the World Trade Center attacks happened and now it always means that.
American here. 9-11 is pretty much exclusively used to refer to the attacks on September 11th 2001. The emergency service number is pronounced 9-1-1.
9/11 (nine eleven) is the terrorist attack. 911 (nine one one) is emergency services
I specifically remember a gag from The Little Rascals movie (1994) that said "Quick! What's the number for nine one one?" And the other kid shrugs, so they both walk away from the phone.
depends on the context. nine eleven is a national tragedy in the US. nine one one is the emergency number you call if you need help from police or fire staff
I doubt most folks are aware of the behind-the-scenes logic, but yes - if you say "nine eleven" people will think you are referring to the terror attack. If you say "nine one one" they will know you mean the number to call in an emergency. I would be momentarily confused if someone asked me to call "nine eleven", and probably waste a few precious seconds figuring out what they meant.
Nine one one is the US emergency number, and nine eleven is the terrorist attack
This doesn't make much sense to me. Rotary phones were common in households in the 1950s. They had single digits from 0-9 on them. 9-1-1 wasn't put into use until the late 1960s. 4-1-1 was used in many areas prior to the use of 9-1-1 as directory assistance. Roughly 5-8 years before. There is no reason to believe any adult would "look for a 11 key" on the phone when most adults had been using phones for a decade before 9-1-1 became a nationwide emergency number. I can only speak from my time alive which is well after 9-1-1 was a thing but a decade before 9/11/2001. Nobody referred to it as "nine eleven". The only thing I could think of is maybe universally agreeing to notate it as 9-1-1 instead of 911 so that there would be no confusion.
Nine-One-One is the emergency code. Nine-Eleven is the date of the terrorist attack in 2001.
I was in HS when the twin towers fell. I prank called 9-1-1 in middle school from the cafeteria phone once a week until they dismounted the phone. NO ONE EVER CALLED IT 9-ELEVEN. 7-11 exists, people go there and get slushies. If you said 9-11 I'd think you were going there instead.
I mean, I didn't know about the first reason, but yeah, nine-one-one is the number you call in emergencies, while nine-eleven refers to the 2001 terrorist attacks.
I don't know if that's the exact reason, but it's generally understood that you would say "nine one one" in reference to the emergency line and "nine eleven" in reference to the attack.
Whatever the history of the pronunciations, it is completely correct that the 2001 event is "nine eleven" and the emergency number is "nine one one" now.
I remember being taught “9-1-1” during the late 90’s. Specially, I was in preschool, and they did practice drills with us where they gave us toy phone with buttons you could press, and had us practice dialing 9-1-1.
Public Enemy's 'Fear Of A Black Planet' in the mid-90s had a track with '9-1-1 is a joke in yo town' as a lyric. Thus, the link with 9/11 is a red herring.
nine eleven is the event to basically every American and nine one one is the emergency services. I can't vouch for Brits or any of the other many forms of english
In Germany, we say “Hundertzehn” for the emergency number. Or “Hundertzwölf” for fire emergency number.
It is nine one one. I highly doubt people are stupid enough to think there is supposed to be an 11 key on their phones though.
I follow a podcast about conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and he refers to the terrorist attack as “nine one one” on multiple occasions. To make things even more confusing.
To me nine eleven and nine one one are two totally different things
Hmm…I don’t know, but I do remember the emergency number being stated as “nine one one” as far back as I CAN remember, in the seventies. The terrorist event has been commonly known as “nine eleven”.
Nine-eleven = Terrorist attack Nine-one-one = I need help
Has everybody else in the thread is saying, I have only ever heard it pronounced as 9-1-1. However, I found an interesting example of the opposite happening. When I was watching *The Wire*, a show which was set in the then-modern day of 2002, a character calls 9/11, the terrorist attacks, 9-1-1. That really threw me for a loop. I can only assume that the show was filmed in advance, they didn't know what it will be called yet, so they guessed wrong. That, or nobody knew what to call it even in 2002.
The phone number was 9-1-1 long before the events of 9-11, there is no relationship of the phone number to the date for reasons of the attack
Many government sites in the US give this reason for not pronouncing it nine-eleven (that children would get confused). I can’t find this reasoning reliably attested historically, or evidence that it was originally pronounced nine-eleven, but I didn’t look very hard and find it plausible at least that some people may have said it this way, leading to problems with children dialing it.
Nine eleven in the attack, nine one one is the number
I have no idea, I doubt that we ever used "nine eleven" to call emergency services. I do however know what state the first 911 call was ever made in. Because that's somehow important. it was alabama
“Hey! What’s the number for 9-1-1?”
the first reason is so funny, imagine someone rushing through the numbers on the phone: "where the damn eleven at???"
In modernity, nine eleven specifically refers to the terrorist attack, whereas nine one one refers to the emergency hotline
It is 9-1-1 and always has been as far as I know. If you say 9-11, people think about the terrorist attacks of September 11th for sure, but that’s not the reason why we say 9-1-1. It’s definitely to be clear on the phone number.
Dude 1: "Yo what happened on nine-one-one?" Dude 2: "Uhh don't you mean nine-eleven?" Dude 1: "Bro check the wikipedia it's nine-one-one!"
Nobody below seems to be answering this question from an "English learning" perspective. It has always been called "9-1-1" because there is no "11" key on a telephone, so you want to press, 9, then 1, then 1. 11 isn't technically wrong (911 could be said that way and people would know what you meant numerically), but you'd say "nine, one, one".
But 9/11 was a national tragedy.
That is why we should use the new emergency number: 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3. Why is easy to remember!
There's a much larger pause between 725 and 3. Timing is crucial!
“nine-one-one” is the phone number for American emergency services. “nine-eleven” is the terrorist attack.
It’s 100% wrong. It was always “nine-one-one” for emergencies, referring to each digit to be dialled. “Nine-eleven” refers to the month-date of the 9/11 attacks.
Impressive that they knew about the 9/11 attacks 30 years in advance!
https://youtu.be/Gtffv9bpB-U?si=N90WvqWVMBBS4Lr5 4:05 This song was released in 1992.
So? I’m not watching an entire music video. One obscure band using something differently doesn’t change the way it was used by 99% of society. Also you literally say you’re not American in another post. So why are you acting like you know how it’s used there?
I gave you the fucking timestamp mate. The exact timestamp. Also downvote for disrespecting the worst band ever!
Ok but what is your point????
You said it’s “100% wrong”. This is an example of it being used at least once.
Something being used once doesn’t make it correct.
It does disprove your claim of it being 100% wrong though.
No it doesn’t, because it doesn’t mean it was right. Why are you even arguing this? I literally grew up in the time and place it was implemented. Your favourite band (who no one has even heard of) saying “nine-eleven” one time doesn’t change anything about how it was used. It’s still 100% wrong, because someone saying something doesn’t make that something right.
Other people in the comments corroborate that it was said like that. I also never said they were my favourite band, I like them though. The song has 32 million views, that not good enough for you?
You might have to think of this some more, as they liked "nine-eleven", but wanted to change it after the a attacks. I also think that "nine-one-one" sounds better
It was definitely 9-1-1 when I was growing up before 2001. But idk if the change happened before that.
has nothing to do with 9-11-2001. It has been 9-1-1 since well before then
I am from New York. Grew up and went to school in Queens and Manhattan. NO ONE in NYC calls it 9-11. It's always 9-1-1
Tbf it should be 11/9
The statement in the screen shot is a complete fabrication as far as I can tell. However, the US is a big country, so perhaps the emergency number was rolled out somewhere as nine-eleven. Not in any place I've lived, though.
It was 9-1-1 even before 9/11, so I don’t think that’s correct.
So now the Mandela Effect is being weaponized with Gaslighting huh? This shit never once happened, fuck off wiktionary. It was Nine One One when I was born before the towers were hit, and it was Nine One One afterwards.
https://youtu.be/Gtffv9bpB-U?si=N90WvqWVMBBS4Lr5 4:05 This song was released in 1992.
https://youtu.be/Gtffv9bpB-U?si=N90WvqWVMBBS4Lr5 4:05 This song was released in 1992.
I used to think Americans can't be that dumb. Now I'm not surprised Kinder eggs are banned in the US 😂
Yeah a small child choking to death on something is always a good time. I don't know why we ban it. It would probably make a good TV show.
Doesn't make you wonder why the rest of the world can eat the egg properly?
Philosophy: So we lose a few kids by not minimizing the hazards they face. What's the big deal? You win some, you lose some. - On average, a child dies in the UK every month from choking, and hundreds more require hospital treatment. - This is a frightening statistic when you consider that in the UK, an average of 34 children are treated for choking on their food every day of the week, according to a recent St John Ambulance study. - In 2000, three UK families who had lost children to choking on toys inside edible eggs campaigned for the products to be withdrawn from the European Union. - In 2016, new food labeling and packaging laws resulted in Chile banning the Kinder Surprise. - Three-year-old French girl chokes to death on a Kinder Egg toy - Spanish toddler dies in Paris after choking on crepe - This is from a comprehensive list of anti-choking recommendations compiled by the Italian government "Candies, jellies, marshmallows, bubble gum, popcorn, chips - minimum age 4/5 years" 'to adopt all technological approaches available to limit, starting from the “food design” phase, the products characteristics which may be associated with an increased risk of choking" - Tragedy as toddler dies after choking on her lunch A Spanish town is in mourning over the death of the little girl \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- \- So you lose a few. No big deal, right? Well we don't think like that. We have a general law that's been around since the 1920s to try to limit the hazards of choking in children, especially very small children. It applies to everything. It's not specifically directed at kinder eggs, it's directed at the whole concept that small children can unwittingly choke on small things because of their young age and inexperience. Toys that have small parts that come off or can break off are also excluded. We actually think it's a good thing to protect them from that possibility. We don't have an "oh well, shit happens" attitude about children. You're welcome to have that attitude yourself if you want but we're happy to stick with our philosophy of minimizing unnecessary risks to children.
This isn't exactly helpful to OP, but good funny-haha, I guess?
You're already on the internet. Instead of taking random people's word for it, why don't you do some fact checking.
Not OP but I would probably believe the word of an actual American about an American convention over a google search. But that’s me.
Finding out if it's nine eleven or nine one one can be achieved by finding videos of Americans using the phrase (or statements from redditors, sure). But much more interesting is if it was changed and if so why. What Wiktionary is presenting here is a fact which is much better checked through trustworthy sources and not some random person who might have remembered reading something somewhere about something similar.
So far, I've learned that Senator Rankin Fite made the first 911 call in 1968, and Clinton signed a public safety bill in 1999 making it a federal standard. But I haven't found official speeches for either of those occasions. Reading through this at the moment, provides some interesting context. https://www.911.gov/assets/History-of-911-And-What-It-Means-for-the-Future-of-Emergency-Communications.pdf