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, and Culture.