Knowing my fondness for quirky Uruguayan handwriting, Syd sent along this gem:

1 something times maybe 20, or 20 liters, and one of the worst attempts at a 9 that I’ve seen yet. His annotations are in dark red, but why stop there? What’s with the month scribble? And since when is a 7 simply a crossed 1?

What’s starting to make sense is that this handwriting actually mirrors the way many Uruguayans speak. Not all, but many, especially the important people like electricians, mechanics, and plumbers: largely incomprehensible mumbles to a non-native.

Alas, I didn’t pick up handwriting samples in Colombia, Peru, or Bolivia, where they speak clearly, so I’ll just have to hypothesize for now that they also write legibly. Seems a stretch, but you never know.

As anyone who has followed this blog or a while will recognize, this is not a new subject.

The first thing about this presupuesto (estimate) you might notice¹ is the 9 that looks like a lollipop. And you might recall that the 9s of Uruguay are a near-obsession of mine.

But no, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, but don’t find it: when you buy house paint in Uruguay, the cost varies with the color. You don’t just ask “how much does a liter of this brand cost?” — you have to ask “How much does a liter of this brand in this color cost?”

So I picked a slightly cream color and got the cost for 20 liters, UYP 2,596 (about USD 17.30/gallon). At the last (unhelpful) place I bought paint the cost for them to mix the color was a multiple of the cost of the plain white, so I wrote down another price.

Uhn huh. If you take the 20 liters of plain white, ask them to add color and mix it for you, they will charge you 89 pesos — less.

¹ red arrows have a way of doing that

Well, at least whoever wrote this got the nines correct, a minor cause of celebration in Uruguay.

But alas, those upside-down fours….

If you’re one of my three (or is it two?) regular readers, you might recall that the 9s of Uruguay bother me. And if you look at this one, you can see that obviously the writer was taught to make a nine starting with a counterclockwise loop, which then rejoins itself and veers off at an angle to look like a 9. Unless it doesn’t, in which case it ends up as a P.

But what’s up with that first digit — ?

It’s a 4. It just happens to be upside down.

How the hell did someone learn, or decide, to write a 4 upside-down? Also, if you clicked on the link above, you might note that the 3 here is verging into the territory of the 2 on the linked page.

Uruguay is not an exotic country, but does hold some mystery. If you’re willing to squint just right, with your bad eye.

What is it with the way people write 9s in Uruguay?

I’ve mentioned it before. These recent examples came from two hardware stores:

Further confusing the issue, some Uruguayans write 9s correctly.

What decides how you’re going to write a 9?

Are both equally acceptable during early school years?

Curious minds want to know.

Something I’ve noted before, but the 9s of Uruguay still amaze me. for some reason, it seems a majority of the population writes them backwards.

I found this sufficiently unsettling that I wrote the number myself, so as not to have to decipher 0P1 08P 338 on the fly.

We’re getting closer to being (mini) farm owners. As we left the escribana‘s office, she handed me this:

Any ideas?

U$S 1.967 – or to Americans, $1,967, the balance I need to pay in the next few days. To locals here, $1,967 means pesos, or a little over a hundred bucks. Hence the U$S. It can get confusing in a store when you see price tags in two currencies – not both together, rather one or the other.

But the thing I marvel at is the ‘P’ for ‘9.’ I don’t know how they’re taught, but sometimes they get it right, and as often as not it’s backward. Sometimes both on the same paper.