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

Wed Oct 6 13:32:46 UTC 2004

I am disappointed...
Seeing the title, I expected a fundraising bringing us a milliard of 
dollars.
Sigh

Craig Franklin a écrit:
> 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, Art,
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