 | Long and short scales: Encyclopedia II - Long and short scales - Current usage
Long and short scales - Current usage
Long and short scales - Countries using neither short nor long scales
The following countries have their own numbering systems and use neither short nor long scales:
- China - see Chinese numerals
- Japan - see Japanese numerals
- Korea - see Korean numerals
Long and short scales - Short scale countries
- Most English-speaking countries — the U.S., Canada (except French-speaking parts), United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, etc. [citation needed]
- Brazil, which despite speaking a variant of Portuguese, uses 109 = bilhão, 1012 = trilhão, etc.
- India, where the Indian numbering system is commonly used, the short scale is also understood by English speakers, since there is no overlap in terms.
- Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking US territory but generally uses 1012 = billón, 1018 = trillón, etc.
- Russia and Turkey, where 109 is commonly called "milliard" but the short scale is used for 1012 and above .
- Greece, which uses 109 = disekatommyrio ("bi-hundred-myriad"), 1012 = trisekatommyrio, ("tri-hundred-myriad"), etc
Long and short scales - Long scale countries
- Most other countries. Examples:
French, Danish and Norwegian milliard, German Milliarde, Dutch miljard, Hungarian milliárd, Hebrew milliard, Spanish millardo, Italian miliardo, Polish miliard, Swedish miljard or milliard, Finnish miljardi, Latvian miljards, Czech miliarda, Romanian miliard and Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian milijarda all equal 109.
French, Norwegian and Danish billion, German Billion, Dutch biljoen, Spanish billón, Polish and Serbian bilion, Swedish billion or biljon, Finnish biljoona, Croatian bilijun, Portuguese (Portugal) bilião, Slovenian bilijon - all equal 1012.
Long and short scales - Notes
In Italian, the word bilione officially means 1012. Colloquially, bilione can mean both 109 and 1012; trilione both 1012 and (rarer) 1018 and so on. Therefore, in order to avoid ambiguity, hardly anybody uses them. Forms such as mille miliardi (a thousand milliards) for 1012, un milione di miliardi for 1015, un miliardo di miliardi for 1018, mille miliardi di miliardi for 1021 are much more common.
The term "milliard" is now obsolete in British English (though its derivation "yard" is still used as slang in the London money, foreign exchange and bond markets) and "billion" has meant nothing except 109 in all published writing for many years now. Both the UK government and the BBC use the short scale exclusively in all contexts. Anyone deliberately using billion to mean 1012 in British English is likely to be misunderstood.
However, the long scale understanding still persists, and not only among older people. As numbers this large are rare in everyday life, a significant proportion of lay readers will interpret "billion" as 1012 ("a million million"), even if they are young enough to have been taught otherwise at school. Following this pattern incorrectly, some will even extrapolate "trillion" as a (long scale) billion billions (1024) rather than the actual long scale 1018 or the short scale 1012.
For the above reasons, avoiding the words "billion", "trillion" etc. may be advisable when writing for the general public.
In Australia, some documents use the term thousand million for 109 in cases where two amounts are being compared using a common unit of one 'million'. The current recommendation by the Australian Department of Finance and Administration (formerly known as AusInfo), and the legal definition, is the short scale. Education, media outlets, and literature all use the short scale in line with other English speaking countries. As at 1999, the Australian Government's financial department did not consider short scales to be standard, but used them occasionally [3][citation needed]
In Mexico, even though the Spanish language has the word "millardo" to mean 109, this word is practically never used, even by the government or the news media, so Mexico should be considered as a long scale country which doesn't use any specific word to mean 109. This quantity is expressed as "mil millones" (a thousand million). "Un billón" (one billion) means a million millions (1012).
The official Esperanto words biliono, triliono etc. are ambiguous, and the inherently international nature of Esperanto communication compounds the problem by preventing any national presumption in favour of long or short scale. Ambiguity may be avoided by the use of the unofficial but generally-recognised suffix -iliono appended to a numeral indicating the power of a million, e.g. duiliono (from du meaning "two") = (106)2 = 1012, triiliono = 1018, etc. Miliardo is an unambiguous term for 109.
Other related archivesAustralia, BBC, Brazil, Canada, China, Chinese numerals, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, European, Finnish, France, French, German, Greece, Hebrew, Hungarian, India, Indian numbering system, Ireland, Italian, Japan, Japanese numerals, Korea, Korean numerals, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Puerto Rico, Romanian, Russia, SI prefixes, Scientific notation, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkey, U.S., UK government, United Kingdom, United States of America, Wikipedia, as of 2005, billion, binary prefix, citation needed, engineering notation, giga, myriad, names of large numbers, nineteenth, tera, twentieth centuries
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Current usage", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
