[Wikipedia-l] I'll see your milliard, and raise you a thousand million...

Wed Oct 6 10:23:14 UTC 2004

Having lived and worked in both the UK and Ireland, I dare say that 
IMHO the use of "milliard" is now (thank the Gods) relatively scarce 
and diminishing in (probably any form of) English. It's an entirely 
different story however when it comes to other languages -- e.g. in 
German, "Milliarde" is the ''only'' correct way.

(NB: use a non-proportional font here)

So common English usage:		compares to German usage:

million						Million
billion						Milliarde
trillion						Billion
quadrillion 					Billiarde
quintillion					Trillion
etc.							etc.

IMO the "milliard" convention is absolute rubbish, because it 
effectively breaks the decimal system and I'm glad it's in decline in 
the English speaking world. I wish the same were true for its use in 
other languages as well.

</2eurocents>

On 6 Oct 2004, at 11:55, Craig Franklin wrote:

> Scríobh David Friedland:
>
>> would appear to an en-gb reader as
>>
>> a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold 
>> marks
>>
>> and to an en-us reader as
>>
>> a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 billion gold 
>> marks
>
> This is clumsy, but manageable, when there's only en-us and en-gb to 
> worry
> about.  Unfortunately, there are more than two dialects of English.
>
> For instance, in Australian English, the word "milliard" is unknown (I 
> had
> to go and look it up to see what you were on about).  The sentence in 
> en-au
> would be "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 
> thousand
> million gold marks." (a thousand million being a 1 followed by nine 
> zeroes).
> I've no idea what sort of dialectical differences exist in other 
> English
> dialects, but I assume that they're there also.
>
> I mean, it probably could be done, but coming up with alternatives for
> en-us, en-gb, en-au, en-ie, en-za, etc etc, would just be a massive 
> pain,
> and lets be honest, who has time for that sort of work.  The system 
> works
> fine as it is now (although putting the number in decimal form 
> afterwards
> would probably help, and is my policy when there might be confusion 
> caused).
>
> - Craig Franklin
>
> -------------------
> Craig Franklin
> PO Box 764
> Ashgrove, Q, 4060
> Australia
> http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, 
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