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

Wed Oct 6 11:16:37 UTC 2004

In message <001401c4ab8a$af7cba40$69971bd3 at equinox>, Craig Franklin 
<craig at halo-17.net> writes
>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).

I agree. "Thousand million" is absolutely unambiguous. I would say that 
"milliard" has not been used in the UK for at least the last 30-40 
years, and would not be understood by most readers.

-- 
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/