A high-schooler in Indianapolis, Indiana, wonders why the word number is abbreviated as no. when there’s no letter O in the word. The answer lies in the Latin word numero, which is the ablative form of the Latin word for number, numerus.

印第安納州印第安納波利斯的一名高中生想知道為什么數(shù)字這個(gè)詞被縮寫為No，尤其當(dāng)數(shù)字這個(gè)單詞中沒有字母O的時(shí)候。答案就在它對應(yīng)的拉丁詞匯numerus的離格形式Numero身上。

- Hello, you have a way with words.

你好，《能說會道》節(jié)目。

- Hi! My name is Vivian, I am calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

嗨，我的名字叫薇薇安。我來自印第安納州的印第安納波利斯市

- Welcome, Vivian! What can we do for you?

歡迎薇薇安，我們有什么能幫到你的嗎?

- I had a question why is the abbreviation for the word number (it just spelled n-u-m-b-e-r) No, is the letter O isn't anywhere in the original word.

我有一個(gè)問題，為什么number，拼寫是n-u-m-b-e-r，這個(gè)單詞的縮寫是No，在原單詞里根本沒有o這個(gè)字母啊

- Oh, so you think it maybe should be Nu instead of No is the abbreviation ha?

哦，所以其實(shí)你覺得它的縮寫更應(yīng)該是Nu，而不是No

- Right I mean like... probably.

是的，可能是吧

- Ha ha ha ha! It's part of a set of abbreviations we have that are basically older than English, at least modern English. It goes back to the Latin form of the word number... it's... One form of it was numero, very much like in Spanish and Italian today in n-u-m-e-r-o.

這是一套比英語，至少是現(xiàn)代英語更古老的縮寫的一部分。它可以追溯到單詞number的拉丁語形式，其中的一種是numero，非常像現(xiàn)在西班牙語和意大利語中的n-u-m-e-r-o

And Latins scribes abbreviated a lot of their writing and the way they abbreviate that word was in №, the little marker maybe they raise O with the line above it to indicated that the word had been shortened.

拉丁文字中有很多縮寫，他們縮寫這個(gè)詞的方式是用o這個(gè)小標(biāo)記，把o加上橫線升格表示這個(gè)詞被縮短了

So that's it...so we just capt that Latin abbreviation.

就是這樣，我們就使用了拉丁語的縮略語

- Wow! That's so cool!

哇，太酷了

- Yeah, there's a few others like that... pound is the classic example of that, like a weigh lb for pound.

是的，還有很多跟它一樣的詞……pound就是個(gè)典型的例子，作計(jì)量單位時(shí)寫作lb

- Yeah, yeah... in the original Latin word is numerus but that particular case...ablative case means in or with.

是的,是的。在最初的拉丁語單詞numero中，這種離格的書寫的意思是in或with

- Yeah, abl... we don't have cases in English in that way so it's kind of ... lost on us but yeah.

是的，我們在英語中沒有這種格式，就是慢慢丟失了這種情況

- Well cool, thank you for telling me.

謝謝您幫我解惑

- Yes, that's pretty much it. Thanks for call. Really appreciate it.

是的，差不多就是這樣，感謝你的來電

- Thanks, bye!

謝謝，再見

- Take care, bye!

保重，再見