4 ms·
Most likely a typo (fixed by now), but in some (most?) non-English languages billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9, usually the error happens wh
by flohofwoe 2mo ago
Most likely a typo (fixed by now), but in some (most?) non-English languages billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9, usually the error happens when translating from English though, not into English.
- HeavyStorm 2mo agoNever heard of this... Any examples?
- MandieD 2mo agoGerman: 10^6 is "Million," 10^9 is "Millarde," and 10^12 is "Billion"
- dotwaffle 2mo agoHence why in financial markets, a 10^9 billion is called a "yard" (from milliarde)!
- flohofwoe 2mo agoIn German, 10^9 is a 'Milliarde', and a 'Billion' is 10^12. The Wikipedia article has a nice map what countries use which convention (search for "Current Usage"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
- neysofu 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales Specifically: > [...] giga- is always 10^9, which is 'billion' in short scale but 'milliard' in long scale.
- kelvinjps10 2mo agoIn Spanish it is that way
- cassianoleal 2mo ago> billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9 Is it? In Portuguese it's thousand, million, billion, trillion... (Milhar, milhão, bilhão, trilhão, ...)
- flohofwoe 2mo agoApparently it's different between Portugal and Brazil? (e.g. Portugal => long-scale, Brazil => short-scale - but that's just what ChatGPT is telling me). E.g. maybe it's more of a 'Europe-except-UK vs Americas' thing?
- cassianoleal 2mo agoTIL, I wasn't aware Portugal differed. I wonder about the other Portuguese-speaking countries. They generally align closer to Portugal and Brazil is the outlier (though it accounts for ~78% of Portuguese speakers!) so I suspect it's the case here as well.
- fallingbananna 2mo agoHere is a list of languages that use "milliard": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/milliard#Descendants https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/milliard#Descendants
- Hardwired8976 2mo agoYeah, in German for example.
- elorant 2mo agoSame in Greek. It's "ekatommyrio" with a prefix of the order of magnitude "dis" from two for billions, "tris" from three for trillions, "tetrakis" from four for quadrillions and so on.
- francisofascii 2mo agoThe Social Network quote also needs an update. "a billion dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool.... A Trillion Dollars."