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

[Yann Forget]

Hi,

Le Wednesday 6 October 2004 11:55, 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.

Yes, and in India, you would write "22.6 thousand crores gold marks" or 
"22,600 crores gold marks". So not very simple to accomodate. ;)

> 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).

This debate is interesting culturally, I am learning a lot, but I don't think 
it's going towards a usuable solution.

> - Craig Franklin

Yann
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