tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 16 03:14:16 1996

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Re: billion

> 
> >The official terminology is 'trillion' for a thousand billion,
> >'quadrillion' for million billion, 'quintillion' for billion billion, etc.
> >As it happens, due to the *highly* unwieldy nature of the British
>                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  hmmm, doesn't strike me as such

Compare the single word 'quadrillion' with the less wieldy 'thousand
billion' in British. It rapidly starts to get silly after that.

I guess I just find the American system easier to deal with - unless I'm
talking about 'metres per lightyear' or the number of protons in a body,
I don't need large numbers....or can express them in exponent form (ie.
3.0x10E8 [or 3.0x10^8] for the speed of light).

Klingon is unusual in that it has a separate word for each power of ten,
rather than using combined versions like we have. It *could* be that
they have words (soo far unrevealed) for larger numbers, but in the
absence of canon-cal examples or clarification, given the way numbers
are structured so far, it makes little difference if one says
{wa'SaDbIp} or {wa'maH'uy'}. To our way of thinking, with names based on
powers of thousands in larger numbers, continuing it that way is easier
on our thinking, but again that's just a matter for personal taste.
Certainly I'd undersand either of the above examples if someone used them.

> >system, and the prevalence of the American system (which I believe is
> >used in the SI system), the British now exclusively use the same system

>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ If I'm not mistaken, the SI is a predominantly French
> system and thus uses the european way of saying millions and billions.
> But we dutch have a different word for a thousand million (i.e. a miljard).
> I wouldn't know what the exact english way is, but French uses milliard too.

'Miljard' isn't a concept found in British English...hence the recent
adoption of American-style numbering. All the newspapers (which forms
much of the reading matter involving large numbers for most people) use
the American system, and these days, most science textbooks either *are*
american, or use the American system anyway. I know that in Physics,
Maths and Astronomy classes, 'billion'='thousand million' (or 1x10^9) in
all my university courses. Also, the 'SI' system, although originally
French, is the basis of the metric system - any 'modern' measurement
like 'metre', 'joule', 'watt', 'ampere', 'kilogramme', etc. are all SI 
units, unlike the older 'imperial' system (miles, feet, pounds).

> >as the Americans. Certainly all the newspapers do, and I have never seen
> >anyone really use the old system - *way* too clunky. It might be simpler
> >if we kept this list using the American version, since it is easier.
>                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Does this mean you count like million, billion, trillion etc.? Is that all
> there is too it? (I never bothered to find out.)

Aye, that's right. Nice and simple :) Since I rarely use anything much
over 1x10^16, even in Astronomy, it's certainly more convenient.

> >After all, who regularly uses numbers over 'trillion', unless you're a
> >scientist...or discussing the US budget deficit <wink>.
> 
> As scientist, I'd say you had better use notations like 10E10 for 10 american
> billions.

That is true when talking scientifically, but in everyday conversations
it is more usual to use 'accepted' names - I don't say "1x10^3" every
time i want to say 'thousand', just because I'm a scientist - which most
people aren't, anyway.

A quick guide is....

British				American		Scientific
------------------------------------------------------------------
thousand			thousand		1x10^3
million				million			1x10^6
thousand million (milliard?)	billion			1x10^9
million million	(billion) 	trillion		1x10^12
thousand billion		quadrillion		1x10^15
million billion			quintillion		1x10^18
billion billion (trillion)	sextillion		1x10^21

Also, I happen to like the American forms, aside from them being shorter
and more convenient. In british, 'quadrillion' would probably only come in
in an *obscenely* large number - like 1x10^42, which is larger than the
number of *particles* in the Universe (give or take :) - and hence
rarely gets used.

Anyone out there have any preferences on which Klingon combinations get used?

> jejQIb

qSeroHS tej'e'
-- 
Niall Hosking
aka Kserokhs Vaene
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
http://www.gla.ac.uk/Clubs/WebSoc/~884744ho

'Practise random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.'

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