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> There is no actual "word" for million in Chinese. > 百 is a hundred, 萬 is ten-thousand. A million is 百萬. But also I'm guessing 400萬 could be understood as the

by tomkwok 11y ago

> There is no actual "word" for million in Chinese. > 百 is a hundred, 萬 is ten-thousand. A million is 百萬. But also I'm guessing 400萬 could be understood as the same as 4百萬/四百萬. But there is 億 in Chinese which means a hundred million. 　十　 10 ten 　百　 100 hundred 　千　 1,000 thousand 　萬　 10,000 ten-thousand 十萬　 100,000 hundred-thousand 百萬　 1,000,000 million 千萬　 10,000,000 ten-million 　億　 100,000,000 hundred-million 十億　 1,000,000,000 billion 百億　 10,000,000,000 ten-billion 千億　 100,000,000,000 hundred-billion 萬億 or 兆 1,000,000,000,000 trillion 萬 and 億 are traditional Chinese characters. The simplified characters are 万 and 亿 respectively. 兆 is usually avoided because it does not only mean trillion but also 百萬 (million) in mainland China's translation of "mega-byte" or "mega-pixel" for example.

deleted 11y ago
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escherplex 11y ago
Interesting that 兆 is sometimes used in Hanzi for a trillion. Core meanings 兆 include 'portent' or 'omen' which could cause a central banker to lament 'maybe we've printed too much currency'. English used to have a simple system for naming large numbers using the French suffix 'illion' for 'million' and adding prefixes for powers of a million (see OED). So a billion was (10 ^ 6) ^ 2 and by extension trillion was (10 ^6) ^ 3. A billion today was called a thousand million then. However the US pushed for the value of 10 ^ 9 as a billion (with trillion as 10 ^ 12) and back in 1975 that became the 'world' standard.
- telotortium 11y ago
  The world standard for English -- the long scale is standard in many other languages.
  - escherplex 11y ago
    That's why 'world' was in quotes. Hubris is tedious, nationalist or otherwise. I remember visiting someone's oversized digs who had an old Sony 3/4 inch videocassette archives of Charles Kuralt's 'On the Road' series. In one, Kuralt was whining about Jimmy Carter's attempts to impose the metric system as US standard and ended his rant with 'there's nothing romantic about a centimeter worm' [from some 'inch worm measuring a marigold' pop song]. That general sentiment held and subsequent attempts at metrification fizzled out. And we know what impact mixed standards had on construction of the mirror for the Hubble space telescope.
swang 11y ago
I'm not 100% on this, but I am pretty sure 億 was not always "hundred-million" since the numbering system shifted sometime between the historical/modern writing systems.

by tomkwok 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

escherplex 11y ago

Interesting that 兆 is sometimes used in Hanzi for a trillion. Core meanings 兆 include 'portent' or 'omen' which could cause a central banker to lament 'maybe we've printed too much currency'. English used to have a simple system for naming large numbers using the French suffix 'illion' for 'million' and adding prefixes for powers of a million (see OED). So a billion was (10 ^ 6) ^ 2 and by extension trillion was (10 ^6) ^ 3. A billion today was called a thousand million then. However the US pushed for the value of 10 ^ 9 as a billion (with trillion as 10 ^ 12) and back in 1975 that became the 'world' standard.

telotortium 11y ago
The world standard for English -- the long scale is standard in many other languages.
- escherplex 11y ago
  That's why 'world' was in quotes. Hubris is tedious, nationalist or otherwise. I remember visiting someone's oversized digs who had an old Sony 3/4 inch videocassette archives of Charles Kuralt's 'On the Road' series. In one, Kuralt was whining about Jimmy Carter's attempts to impose the metric system as US standard and ended his rant with 'there's nothing romantic about a centimeter worm' [from some 'inch worm measuring a marigold' pop song]. That general sentiment held and subsequent attempts at metrification fizzled out. And we know what impact mixed standards had on construction of the mirror for the Hubble space telescope.

swang 11y ago

I'm not 100% on this, but I am pretty sure 億 was not always "hundred-million" since the numbering system shifted sometime between the historical/modern writing systems.