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In which countries is 10^12 still billion? My immediate research only renders that it used to be this in British English

by Navarr 8y ago

lagadu 8y ago
Every non-English speaking one, in my very anecdotal and limited experience. I've never seen it used like that outside the US and sometimes UK. No offense meant but it's usually shown as an example of the "Americans can't count" stereotype: 1,000,000,000 is a thousand millions.
- jerf 8y ago
  Both systems are broken. The British system is a bit more nominally consistent, but the names are poor; million and milliard are stupidly phonetically similar for what they are (generally we prefix those differences, probably because it's the ends of words that tend to get slurred, hence we have milli-meters and not meter-millis), and staggering the names out two chunks of 3 at a time doesn't really make much sense. It isn't very user-focused. The American naming system uses roots more clearly and doesn't have the weird pointless bundling together of two groups of 3, but it has a bizarre off-by-one issue... and not the usual 0->1 or 1->0 issue, but a 1->2 issue. For consistency, the order ought to be "ones, millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions", so that the prefix on the digit counter indicates the number of factors of 1000 in question, from zero, one, bi=two, tri=three, etc. However, "thousands" get stuck in there wrecking the whole thing up, so where the names say you have 1 group of 1000, you in fact have two, and so on. It's not an imperial vs. metric sort of thing, it's more an arguing which is the "real" temperature, Fahrenheit or Celsius, when in fact the answer is basically neither because the "real" temperature scale ought to have its 0 at absolute zero, like Kelvin [1] or the lesser-known Rankine [2], which is basically "Kelvin, except the degree is 1 degree Fahrenheit". These are both more "real" because now you can add and subtract temperatures meaningfully, which you can't do with either of Fahrenheit or Celsius. And likewise, neither number system is abstractly all that great. But then, that's part of why we have scientific notation. [1]: Which I just learned is about to be redefined, as of May 20th, 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin#2019_redefinition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin#2019_redefinition [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_scale
  - afwaller 8y ago
    This "off by one" issue, combined with the problem of words related to latin "mille" for thousand in many languages, is why in money people often use K for units of "1,000", MM for units of "1,000,000", and B or sometimes BB for units of "1,000,000" (BB has no meaning as far as I'm aware, people just copy the style of MM). Unfortunately it is likely too late to really adopt the metric system for financial transactions. But the K has crept in for thousands.
  - ajuc 8y ago
    What's wrong with the long scale? It's pretty consistent. Each name is the last times 1000, each new prefix is 1 000 000 times the previous one, and each -iliard is 1000 times -ilion with same prefix. milion = 10^6, miliard = 10^9 bilion = 10^12, biliard = 10^15 trylion = 10^18, tryliard = 10^21 kwadrylion = 10^24, kwadryliard = 10^27, ... Compared to that American way is just insane (as always). But I agree that writing 1.23 * 10^6 is preferable.
    - jerf 8y ago
      To put what I said another way, it emphasizes the wrong things. Nobody cares how many collections of 6 digits something has. 3 digits are what people care about. (Except where they care about 4, or actually vary the number of digit groupings they care about depending on where they appear, but then, this debate has no meaning to them anyhow.) It's consistent, but it's consistent with something that doesn't match people's usage. Both systems are roughly equally broken, so either side mocking the other for their number system is a display of parochialism above and beyond the usual levels one would see.
      - toast0 8y ago
        > Nobody cares how many collections of 6 digits something has. 3 digits are what people care about. I respectfully offer the Lakh [1] (1,00,000) and the Crore [2] (1,00,00,000) for other things people care about. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore
vbarrielle 8y ago
In french "un billion" is 10^12.
kgwgk 8y ago
In all the blue contries in this map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Current_usage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Curren... “The traditional long scale is used by most Continental European countries and by most other countries whose languages derive from Continental Europe (with the notable exceptions of Albania, Greece, Romania, and Brazil).”
AegirLeet 8y ago
German: Million (10⁶) Milliarde (10⁹) Billion (10¹²) Billiarde (10¹⁵) etc.
gnulinux 8y ago
Most non-English languages borrow French word "Milliard" to say English "Billion". Some non-English languages use "Trillion" for English "Trillion" and some use "Billion" for English "Trillion".
csunbird 8y ago
Very interestingly, In Turkey(Turkish) we use: 10^6 : Million 10^9 : Milliarde (instead of billion) 10^12 : Trillion 10^15 : Quadrillion

In which countries is 10^12 still billion? My immediate research only renders that it used to be this in British English

by Navarr 8y ago

In which countries is 10^12 still billion? My immediate research only renders that it used to be this in British English

lagadu 8y ago

Every non-English speaking one, in my very anecdotal and limited experience. I've never seen it used like that outside the US and sometimes UK. No offense meant but it's usually shown as an example of the "Americans can't count" stereotype: 1,000,000,000 is a thousand millions.

jerf 8y ago
Both systems are broken. The British system is a bit more nominally consistent, but the names are poor; million and milliard are stupidly phonetically similar for what they are (generally we prefix those differences, probably because it's the ends of words that tend to get slurred, hence we have milli-meters and not meter-millis), and staggering the names out two chunks of 3 at a time doesn't really make much sense. It isn't very user-focused. The American naming system uses roots more clearly and doesn't have the weird pointless bundling together of two groups of 3, but it has a bizarre off-by-one issue... and not the usual 0->1 or 1->0 issue, but a 1->2 issue. For consistency, the order ought to be "ones, millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions", so that the prefix on the digit counter indicates the number of factors of 1000 in question, from zero, one, bi=two, tri=three, etc. However, "thousands" get stuck in there wrecking the whole thing up, so where the names say you have 1 group of 1000, you in fact have two, and so on. It's not an imperial vs. metric sort of thing, it's more an arguing which is the "real" temperature, Fahrenheit or Celsius, when in fact the answer is basically neither because the "real" temperature scale ought to have its 0 at absolute zero, like Kelvin [1] or the lesser-known Rankine [2], which is basically "Kelvin, except the degree is 1 degree Fahrenheit". These are both more "real" because now you can add and subtract temperatures meaningfully, which you can't do with either of Fahrenheit or Celsius. And likewise, neither number system is abstractly all that great. But then, that's part of why we have scientific notation. [1]: Which I just learned is about to be redefined, as of May 20th, 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin#2019_redefinition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin#2019_redefinition [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankine_scale
- afwaller 8y ago
  This "off by one" issue, combined with the problem of words related to latin "mille" for thousand in many languages, is why in money people often use K for units of "1,000", MM for units of "1,000,000", and B or sometimes BB for units of "1,000,000" (BB has no meaning as far as I'm aware, people just copy the style of MM). Unfortunately it is likely too late to really adopt the metric system for financial transactions. But the K has crept in for thousands.
- ajuc 8y ago
  What's wrong with the long scale? It's pretty consistent. Each name is the last times 1000, each new prefix is 1 000 000 times the previous one, and each -iliard is 1000 times -ilion with same prefix. milion = 10^6, miliard = 10^9 bilion = 10^12, biliard = 10^15 trylion = 10^18, tryliard = 10^21 kwadrylion = 10^24, kwadryliard = 10^27, ... Compared to that American way is just insane (as always). But I agree that writing 1.23 * 10^6 is preferable.
  - jerf 8y ago
    To put what I said another way, it emphasizes the wrong things. Nobody cares how many collections of 6 digits something has. 3 digits are what people care about. (Except where they care about 4, or actually vary the number of digit groupings they care about depending on where they appear, but then, this debate has no meaning to them anyhow.) It's consistent, but it's consistent with something that doesn't match people's usage. Both systems are roughly equally broken, so either side mocking the other for their number system is a display of parochialism above and beyond the usual levels one would see.
    - toast0 8y ago
      > Nobody cares how many collections of 6 digits something has. 3 digits are what people care about. I respectfully offer the Lakh [1] (1,00,000) and the Crore [2] (1,00,00,000) for other things people care about. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore

vbarrielle 8y ago

In french "un billion" is 10^12.

kgwgk 8y ago

In all the blue contries in this map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Current_usage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Curren... “The traditional long scale is used by most Continental European countries and by most other countries whose languages derive from Continental Europe (with the notable exceptions of Albania, Greece, Romania, and Brazil).”

AegirLeet 8y ago

German: Million (10⁶) Milliarde (10⁹) Billion (10¹²) Billiarde (10¹⁵) etc.

gnulinux 8y ago

Most non-English languages borrow French word "Milliard" to say English "Billion". Some non-English languages use "Trillion" for English "Trillion" and some use "Billion" for English "Trillion".

csunbird 8y ago

Very interestingly, In Turkey(Turkish) we use: 10^6 : Million 10^9 : Milliarde (instead of billion) 10^12 : Trillion 10^15 : Quadrillion