Oh really? Make sense though!
This is what I get, which is inline to what you said.
"In Communications Officers' course, one of the key items to remember is that we often work with foreign nationals in joint exercises and in war. Accents can cause difficulties, so in addition to the international alphabet, there were things to do with numbers to help.
We were told to use niner instead of nine and fife instead of five to insure that there was no confusion.
Another tip was to use 'tree' instead of 'three' to avoid getting a double syllable, which can make it harder to understand some of the different accents.
EDIT: In the international alphabet they use 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,niner.
The reason is because the German word for "no" is "Nine". If you're in Germany meaning to say somthing with the number 9, there could be some confusion. "
penyupower wrote:I believe its because in German, the way they pronounce nine means "no". So to not cause confusion, "niner" was introduced. Sounds waaaaay cooler by the way hehe*