Could that be where “3V3” style notation came from? In electronics, 3V3 means 3.3V, not 3/3V or 3x3V or 3.003V, and likewise 1R5 means 1.5 Ohm. It’s handy but took me a while to get used to.
Don't know; Chinese usage seems unlikely to have been influential in the relevant time period.
There is another oddity in Chinese numbers which requires a bit of grammar explanation:
Chinese requires measure words when applying numbers to nouns. English has count nouns and mass nouns ("three crackers", where "cracker" is a count noun, versus "three loaves of bread", where "bread" is a mass noun); Chinese has only mass nouns. [1] Thus:
三个人 "three (三) people (人)", with 个 being a measure word appropriate for people
一只狗 "one (一) dog (狗)", with 只 being a measure word appropriate for animals
一首歌 "one song (歌)", with 首 being a measure word appropriate for poetry
Most nouns use 个.
The oddity is that 半 ("one half") occurs before the measure word when it represents the total amount, but after when it's a modification.
一个小时 "one hour (小时)"
两个小时 "two (两) hours"
半个小时 "half an hour"
一个半小时 "an hour and a half"
This also occurs with money, where it's probably the same grammatical rule:
三块 "¥3"
三块二 "¥3.20"
But for this to be fully consistent, I'd expect 零个半小时 "zero and a half hours" where in reality 半个小时 is used.
[1] Some people have argued that since e.g. "one day" 一天 has no measure word between 一 and 天, 天 must be a noun that requires no measure word. This is wrong; it is a measure word that requires no noun. An easy way to see this is that reduplication carries the same meaning that generally applies to reduplicated measure words, and not the meaning that applies to reduplication of nouns -- 天天 means "every day" in the same way that 个个 means "every [one]"; it does not mean "cute little day" in the same way that 狗狗 means "doggie".
> Like "I'll have 3 loaves please". I guess it would be like 三个 or similar?
That's it exactly, and it's very common. Any time the noun is clear from context, you can leave it out. (You shouldn't leave out the measure word though - where in English you might have "I'll take three", in Chinese you'd still want 三个.)
If you walk into a restaurant, someone will ask 几位 "how many?". 几 is a question word for small numbers, and 位 is a (formal, polite) measure word for people.
Japanese is like that too (probably got it from Chinese), with the added fun that it has two sets of numerals: the indigenous Japanese one and the borrowed Chinese one. So you not only need to memorize the counting word but also which kind of numeral to use.
