Word: billion

Responses

1. 

   Will February 12, 2019

   While giving us this word, it would be good to offer either the option of the European system that makes a billion a million million instead of a thousand million (giving us more efficient use of words for large numbers — a trillion then being a billion [American million million] billion), or going in the opposite direction based on {netlh} we could have words for "hundred thousand" and "ten million" and "hundred million" and get lots more words for big numbers. Either method works, so long as it gives us a usefully high range of numbers.

   1. 

      Felix February 22, 2019

      Indeed; given that we have unique words for 10^1 through 10^6, it seems unlikely that there would be a specific word for 10^9, unless there are also words for 10^7 or 10^8.

      We can't know for sure at the time, but extrapolating from what we have, it seems that either there is a new word for each factor 10, or the factors are separated by millions (or more), much as many East Asian languages group numbers by myriads.

Comments are closed.