tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 16 04:12:45 1996

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Re: billions

Sorry, but...
>Actually, that's a 'googol'. And there is one larger number - a
>'googolplex'. that represents 10^10^100 - not a number you need very
>often :)

I was just thinking. You more or less can use it in entropy. As you
said, there aren't much more than 10^42 particles in the universe,
but their combinations are of the order 10^10^42...starts to get
close to googolplex (I remember that one now too yes)

On that table in your other message, I believe that in Dutch (AFAIK),
a billion is a million million, like in English. Than we get to
a thousand billion being a biljard (forget that one) and next comes
a million billion being a trillion, instead of a trillion being
a billion billion. Anybody following this? ;)

On a more related matter (finally you must all think), in Japanese
they seem to use a system somewhat like a mixture of Klingon and
English.
100          hyaku
1000         sen
10000        man
100000       ju-man (10 times 10000) 
million      hyaku-man
100 million  oku
billion      ju-oku
(american billion :)

What does this tell us: nada ofcourse. But for those that couldn't
yet count in japanese: now you can (with 1=ichi,2=ni, 3=san, 4=yon,
5=go, 6=roku, 7=nana, 8=hachi, 9=kyu and 10=ju). Just put all the
numbers in the right order (multiplier, highest unit, multiplier,
lower unit, etc.)

That's all there is to that language. Although people use 100 times
10000 for a million (hyaku-man) you are also more or less understood
when you say sen-sen (a thousand thousand). It works better for
lower numbers ofcourse (man-ni-hyaku or ju-ni-sen for 12000). It's
similar to the way of saying 5500 in english: either fifty-five-
hundred or five-thousand-five-hundred. Or even five and a half 
thousand.

Lots of ways effectively, and perhaps due to the fact that we only
have specific names per 3 zero's after we reach one-thousand. Maybe
the convention of having a word for every decimal unit would cause
tlhIngan to adopt using the highest unit possible if you can. So
using at least SaD'uy' for a billion, but more probably using the
unit-defining noun for a billion.

Just pure speculation ofcourse, but that's the only way I can put
something on this list :)

OK, apologies for going off-topic for 75% of this mail or more, but
now you all can count in japanese.

jejQIb

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