5 ms·

To expand on what solox3 said, Chinese people put commas in numbers after every 4 digits instead of every 3. I find it kind of confusing when I need to say 3 te

by b6 12y ago

To expand on what solox3 said, Chinese people put commas in numbers after every 4 digits instead of every 3. I find it kind of confusing when I need to say 3 ten-thousands, instead of 30 thousands. It looks like that kind of mistake to me.

protomyth 12y ago
I thought 4 was not a good number, why after every 4?
- b6 12y ago
  It's true, they tend to avoid it because 四 (si4, "four") sounds similar to 死 (si3, "die"). I don't know why they settled on that way. It seems pretty arbitrary, though. I'd like to find out more.
- jcampbell1 12y ago
  Chinese has single words for 100, 1000, 10000, 100000000. In english we have single words for, 100, 1000, 1000000, 1000000000. Indians have a word for 1000000. The commas just serve to make a numbers more readable, thus in chinese there are 4 digits between the commas. It is hard to argue that one system is better than another, but English has the nice property that 2^10 ~= thousand, 2^20 ~= million, 2^30 ~= billion, 2^40 ~= trillion. So i'd argue that English is superior in this respect. Chinese Big-to-Small for dates and many other things is vastly superior to English. Chinese date format is 2015-02-15, and address format is Country, Region, City,Street, number.
- bojo 12y ago
  I come from a Japanese background, a county with a lot of history and culture inherited from China, so take this as you will. They have the following primary designators: 一 One 十 Ten 百 Hundred 千 Thousand 万 Ten Thousand 億 Hundred Million 兆 One Trillion Given the following when considering the max allowed value of a specifier: 10002000 - 1000万2000千 The next significant digit: 100020003000 - 1000億2000万3000千 Next: 1000200030004000 - 1000兆2000億3000万4000千 Everything cleanly breaks down into larger sets of 4 digits.
gggmaster 12y ago
Because in Chinese there is a word "万" for ten thousands.
- robzyb 12y ago
  As an Australian living in Japan, I quickly recognised that as the Japanese word for ten thousands! :P

by b6 12y ago

protomyth 12y ago

I thought 4 was not a good number, why after every 4?

b6 12y ago
It's true, they tend to avoid it because 四 (si4, "four") sounds similar to 死 (si3, "die"). I don't know why they settled on that way. It seems pretty arbitrary, though. I'd like to find out more.
jcampbell1 12y ago
Chinese has single words for 100, 1000, 10000, 100000000. In english we have single words for, 100, 1000, 1000000, 1000000000. Indians have a word for 1000000. The commas just serve to make a numbers more readable, thus in chinese there are 4 digits between the commas. It is hard to argue that one system is better than another, but English has the nice property that 2^10 ~= thousand, 2^20 ~= million, 2^30 ~= billion, 2^40 ~= trillion. So i'd argue that English is superior in this respect. Chinese Big-to-Small for dates and many other things is vastly superior to English. Chinese date format is 2015-02-15, and address format is Country, Region, City,Street, number.
bojo 12y ago
I come from a Japanese background, a county with a lot of history and culture inherited from China, so take this as you will. They have the following primary designators: 一 One 十 Ten 百 Hundred 千 Thousand 万 Ten Thousand 億 Hundred Million 兆 One Trillion Given the following when considering the max allowed value of a specifier: 10002000 - 1000万2000千 The next significant digit: 100020003000 - 1000億2000万3000千 Next: 1000200030004000 - 1000兆2000億3000万4000千 Everything cleanly breaks down into larger sets of 4 digits.

gggmaster 12y ago

Because in Chinese there is a word "万" for ten thousands.

robzyb 12y ago
As an Australian living in Japan, I quickly recognised that as the Japanese word for ten thousands! :P