Billion

[Crucifer]

So how come the yanks say that a billion is 1,000,000,000, when it is clearly 1,000,000,000,000. Million=1 million Bi=2 therefore Billion = 2 millions squashed together to make a million million.

[Primula Baggins]

Nothing clear about it, from my view.

Ten to the twelfth is a trillion. Ten to the ninth is a billion. "Bi" doesn't come into it at all. "Bi-million" would be 2 million, not a million million.

(PS. I know this is a style difference between UK and US English. But that doesn't make the UK usage "right" when US usage is long established.)

[truehobbit]

You mean the Brits count like us?

I've always been teaching my students that the difference was between English and German, not between one variant of English and German.

The strange thing is, I looked that up only a few months ago (when it came up in my last class, and someone actually asked 'why?', and I couldn't answer it ) but I've forgotten again what it says about why the two styles drifted apart, and I don't even remember reading about a British - American difference. Yikes, I need to get more sleep in those periods when I'm working full-time.

Anyway, I do remember what it said about nomenclature (which is, after all, what I needed to answer the student's question ), and I thought it was quite interesting from a math point of view.

Counting:

million - 1,000,000
billion - 1,000,000,000
trillion - 1,000,000,000,000
etc

seems pretty straightforward at first sight: for each new 3-zero group you add one to the meaning of the prefix. Ten to the ninth, i.e. a billion is the next stage after the million, followed by the trillion etc. It makes sense, and you could say that the bi/tri etc thing gives you the number of commas between zeroes.

However, counting
million - 1,000,000
milliard - 1,000,000,000
billion - 1,000,000,000,000
etc

seems to make more sense mathematically and linguistically. Here, a billion has twice as many zeroes as a million, a trillion three times as many etc.


(Btw, I looked it up again after all, and it said that the British are taking over the American system and hardly use the words "milliard" etc these days, so I guess I wasn't all that off with my teaching. Though it's cool to know there might be this difference, even so much so that Crucifer points it out here. )

[Primula Baggins]

So a one followed by 15 zeroes is a "billiard"? If 18 zeroes is a trillion?

[truehobbit]

Yep.

Although I don't think I've heard higher than trilliard, it could go on: quadrillion, quadrilliard, quintillion, quintilliard etc, just with the Latin number names for prefixes.

I think another advantage of this is that you get more names without getting so high in numbers: if you don't use words ending in -ard at all, what do you call a trilliard? You'd already have arrived at sextillion, wouldn't you?

Another argument for using 'milliard' seems to me that a milliard is a thousand millions - so, there's a new name that is similar to the old and contains the meaning of 'thousand' - 'mille'.* It describes the relationship between 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 more meaningfully, I think, while, "billion", by contrast, doesn't seem to reflect so much about the mathematical value of the number.
'Billion' does, however, very nicely reflect the idea of the second power of a million.


ETA:
* - although, of course, come to think of it this only works the first time. It's actually the -ard syllable that somehow conveys 'times 1000', and I don't think there's a linguistic explanation for that.

[Crucifer]

K, I was tired when I posted this, so maybe I wasn't too clear.
The 000,000 bit is the 'illion' bit. M for 1, 1 lot of 000,000 is a million.
Bi is two lots of 000,000, hence 000,000,000,000 is billion. And so on. I use illiard for the 000,000,000 bit. ard is a 000 branch on the end.

[Primula Baggins]

It's quaint, but the American system genuinely is dominant among English speakers now. The publishers I work for now insist that either the American system be imposed, or that the writers say "2 billion (British)" when they mean what we'd call 2 trillion.

I think that makes sense: two people speaking the same language should mean the same thing by the same word, at least in writing.

[truehobbit]

The 000,000 bit is the 'illion' bit. M for 1, 1 lot of 000,000 is a million.

Well, linguistically ( ) the word is derived from combining 'mille' ('thousand') with a Latin suffix meaning 'big'. In Italian, the suffix is "-one" (not sure what the Latin root is, or what the opposite of a diminutive is called) - so, it means "a big thousand".

As I said yesterday, I was a bit puzzled about 'milliard' at first, but I kept thinking about it (surprise ), and it occurred to me that '-ard' is quite a common suffix, too, esp in French (where the word 'milliard' was first coined). Going through some French words ending with this suffix, it seemed to me that it might be said, very broadly speaking, to have the meaning 'having the quality of', which made sense to me with reference to 'milliard'.

So I googled it when I got home just now, and found a French usage, where it is used to make a word pejorative - which I find a bit puzzling again. But, then, to make it that, you need the meaning having the quality of' - and not in all French words does it seem exclusively pejorative.

For example, a "vieillard" is an old chap, in a slightly, but mostly jocularly pejorative sense - but basically, it's someone who has the quality of being old.
A "debrouillard" is someone who is smart, in the sense of someone who has the quality of "debrouiller", to 'get through'.
So, I stick to my little theory of '-ard' meaning 'being of a certain quality', even though that might mostly be used in cases of negative qualities.

(Cf also English 'coward' and 'bastard', btw.)

So, you see how the language geeks take over even mathematical issues.

I think that makes sense: two people speaking the same language should mean the same thing by the same word, at least in writing.

Which is probably why British and American English are often recognised as two different languages these days, otherwise there'd be too much trouble.

However, personally I'd say that it's quite exceptional for two speakers of the same language to mean the same thing by the same word.

[Primula Baggins]

I think that makes sense: two people speaking the same language should mean the same thing by the same word, at least in writing.

Which is probably why British and American English are often recognised as two different languages these days, otherwise there'd be too much trouble.

However, personally I'd say that it's quite exceptional for two speakers of the same language to mean the same thing by the same word.

Certainly true, for literary writing or poetry or such, but the kind of books I edit (scientific/medical/technical) rely on clear communication.

The "billion" issue doesn't come up that often, because texts rarely deal with anything in quantities as large as ten to the ninth or twelfth, and if they do, they tend to write them as decimal powers of ten [6.02 x 10(23), where the "23" is a superscript]. Large amounts of money are about it; some writing on economics does get into those number ranges.

Mostly the British/US differences in the fields I edit are now confined to spelling (haem/heme, orthopaedics/orthopedics, aluminium/aluminum). The words themselves mean the same.

[truehobbit]

Yes, I think numbers in science should be written as numbers (or powers of ten, in this case).

If we're talking about words meaning the same, you'll also have to use metric measurements all round (though I think you once said that you do), given that a British pint is not the same amount as a US pint etc etc etc.

And I trust that the texts in your fields don't talk about pants, rubbers or getting pissed and such things in the first place, so the US/Brit differences wouldn't be problem.

But I remember hearing at Uni that indeed some scholars argue for treating them as different languages instead of just dialectal variants of the same language. It seems to me that their arguments have prevailed at least in the translating industry, because the translation credits of a Tolkien book say "Aus dem Englischen", while the credits for your book, if it got translated into German, would say "Aus dem Amerikanischen".

[Primula Baggins]

Generally, no rubbers and no getting pissed.

And you're right, the metric system is used for almost everything technical or scientific in the United States, including medical measurements. I use it in my science fiction; most American SF readers can "think" in metric as easily as in the English system.

Though I did once have a (bad) writing teacher refer to my use of the word "meters" in a story as "sci-fi mumbo jumbo." That's become a bit of a family joke.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

I couldn't speak for the Irish Republic but the US usage of billion and trillion has superceded our old usage here in the UK for some while. I suspect it was that they (ie govt, advertisers, newspapers etc ) thought they could make a smaller sum sound bigger. One usage had to concede and it makes sense for it to be ours.
Japanese counts in units of 10,000 which makes my head hurt.

[truehobbit]

I use it in my science fiction; most American SF readers can "think" in metric as easily as in the English system.

Or if not, it'll seem nicely exotic to them, like something from a different planet.

Like the cyclamen I vaguely remember seeing in the botany lab of a StarTrek episode or so.

[Primula Baggins]

Actually anyone who studies science over here, starting at age 12 or 13, is immersed in the metric system. That means most people have studied it and worked with it. So the metric system isn't seen as exotic.

When I was in college in the late 1970s, engineers still used English units (they may yet, I don't know), meaning that in physics classes the non-engineers got a miserable taste of how extremely ridiculous the English system is for complicated measurements and calculations. (A "pound" is not a measure of mass, for example, the way a kilogram is; it's a measure of weight, which is mass times the acceleration of gravity, which introduces huge complications in calculations involving mass.) And don't get me started on the conversion factors.

I wish we would just adopt the metric system, but politically, it's not going to happen.

[vison]

Numbers should always be given as powers of 10, once you get over 1 milllion. AFAIC.

[rant]The other thing that drives me absolutely BATS, and I mean BATS, is the European (and Quebec) way of using a comma for the decimal point, and no comma between the sets of digits in large numbers. Confusing?

Let's see: American (and Anglo-Canadian way): $25.19. Quebec way: 25,19$. American way: $1,000,000.25. Stupid way: 1 000 000,25$. Teh thing with the commas is that you know you have a "set" of 3 digits, and you can very easily read the numbers. With only a space, the numbers can easily run together, especially when the space is small or not there . . .123,346,789.98 Easy. 123456789,98 (hard)

And the decimal POINT is the decimal POINT. Not the decimal comma.

And the symbol for the currency should be in the "front", not at the end, of the number.

[/end rant]

[Primula Baggins]

You go, vison!

I have spent many hours of my editing life changing European numbers to North American ones. I think they're confusing in a way that goes beyond not being what I'm used to.

My preference: don't use numerals for anything over 999,999; write it using a numeral and the word ($2.2 billion) or using exponents, for scientific contexts.

[Inanna]

My reasoning for American usage of units...
its a large country, which is why a mile is longer than a km - it sounds like you have to cover less distance, feels better. And a pound is less than a kg, hence easier to lose.

[Primula Baggins]

So why not use leagues? Leagues have the advantage that no one knows exactly how long they are.

And stone. Stone are cool.

In high school we once had to work out the speed of light in fathoms per fortnight.

[Inanna]

You have to some order, Prim. A country can't run if people can't figure out how many leagues it is from State College to Sacramento. And if google maps and mapquest give mis-matching figures.

[truehobbit]

In high school we once had to work out the speed of light in fathoms per fortnight.

Really cool, Prim!

And the decimal POINT is the decimal POINT. Not the decimal comma.

Well, for me it's the other way round. It looks absurd to me to type a point when there should be a comma, and, what's even worse, a comma when there should by rights be a point!

I mean, I can take 2.54 although it looks weird, I guess it's just so clear the point is not a separation between thousands - but having had to type 1,000,000 several times in this thread just felt WRONG - I'm having to force myself all the time not to see a decimal number in that one.

So, I don't know about the Quebecois, but continental Europeans separate thousands with a point - the proper way to write a million, for me, would be: 1.000.000

I have spent many hours of my editing life changing European numbers to North American ones.

Another thing that drives me as BATS as vison ( ) is having to write the 7's and 1's the US way when I write an address - it just goes against the grain not to cross the seven and not to start the 1 with a little upward stroke - but I've had mail not arrive when I wrote my own way, so I guess, unless it was a coincidence, that the post service got the numbers wrong, that's why I'm taking extra care now.