how to pronounce numbers

[Thomas Okken]

(06-27-2018 01:21 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  I've always known of the 2 different systems (my mother was born French Canadian, so she was a long scale user, but moved to USA when she met my father, which caused great confusion when I was in school, learning millions/billions, etc.), but had no idea there were so many differences even among those 2, never mind some of the other systems. In countries that use 'both', it must be confusing indeed; I assume in those countries, the Government must specify which is preferred for official usage.

I suppose this could lead to humorous issues when interpreting large checks: 'oh, you paid me a billion dollars, I assume that's a large scale billion, right?'.

I think 'both' works fine, because most of the long-scale words are never used in practice. 10^9 means large construction projects and government budgets; 10^12 means large economies or global figures. In long-scale Holland I rarely see "biljoen," if it occurs at all, people often play safe and write "1000 miljard" instead, and the obvious next step is to accept milliard and billion as synonyms, and use short scale beyond that, when talking about global GDP or the U.S. national debt.

Of course this line of reasoning doesn't work in countries whose currency is worth very little, but the two that immediately come to my mind in that regard are Japan and South Korea, which happen to be in the "other" category, with 10^4-based systems.

EDIT: On second thought, the scenario that I just suggested isn't what they call "both" in that Wikipedia map, it's "short scale (and milliard)."