French Telephone Numbers

[martin.phillips]

Sorry to be hugely off-topic, but someone out there in unicyberland might be able to help. I've got to ring someone in France first thing on Monday; he's given me three telephone numbers in his email. In the way that English speakers might put W, H, F or M in front of a number to indicate Work, Home, Fax, Mobile, his numbers all have a letter in front. The problem is that all the letters are "E", with a grave accent, acute accent and "little hatty thing" accent to distinguish them. What do the "E"s signify?

[leo]

Originally Posted by martin.phillips

Sorry to be hugely off-topic

Off-topic in J.C. how would you do that?

Originally Posted by martin.phillips

I've got to ring someone in France first thing on Monday; he's given me three telephone numbers in his email. In the way that English speakers might put W, H, F or M in front of a number to indicate Work, Home, Fax, Mobile, his numbers all have a letter in front. The problem is that all the letters are "E", with a grave accent, acute accent and "little hatty thing" accent to distinguish them. What do the "E"s signify?

That way of notation is stupid and especially in the future will lead to confusion.
Usually a single E stands for e-mail, but I assume you are able to distinguish the difference between an e-mail address and a phone-number, plus you just described other characters.
I haven't seen the exact notation or the context, so my guess: maybe a French method to describe the international prefix? In other words; the usual + that especially American's don't understand at all, which is in the US, Mexico and Brazil 011, in Europe 00, in Africa 000, and Russia something different, etc. Anyway it sounds to me like a French abbreviation/notation.

[martin.phillips]

[QUOTE=leo]Off-topic in J.C. how would you do that?


QUOTE]



I'm going to answer my own question, because I've just had another email. The original email has a list like (I've changed the numbers and I'm not sure if the accents will copy into the post properly):

É : +33 (0)1 12 34 56 78

Ê : +33 (0)1 23 45 67 89

È : +33 (0)6 45 67 89 01

The second email gave them in sequence as Tel, Fax and Mobile. I've still no idea if this is a convention in France, but I'll ask when I meet the sender next week.

Martin/

[leo]

Originally Posted by martin.phillips

The second email gave them in sequence as Tel, Fax and Mobile.

Sounds like he's just out to confuse? Knowing a little French, those characters still don't make any sense to me.
Anyway, once you have the answer let us know.

[wobbling bear]

[QUOTE=martin.phillips]

Originally Posted by leo

Off-topic in J.C. how would you do that?


QUOTE]



I'm going to answer my own question, because I've just had another email. The original email has a list like (I've changed the numbers and I'm not sure if the accents will copy into the post properly):

É : +33 (0)1 12 34 56 78

Ê : +33 (0)1 23 45 67 89

È : +33 (0)6 45 67 89 01

The second email gave them in sequence as Tel, Fax and Mobile. I've still no idea if this is a convention in France, but I'll ask when I meet the sender next week.

Martin/

the number starting with 6 is a mobile phone
otherwise I can't guess (and I am french)
but this may be a mistranslation of character encoding (from some dingbats char to UTF or something like that).