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, Art, and Culture.
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