In perusing this article in Le Monde on President Bush’s new budget, I noticed that the total figure was presented in terms of thousands of billions (2 000 milliards). Which seemed exceedingly odd to me. But what do I know–after all, I’m reading the news there to try to bring my French back from the dead.
I just checked my dictionary, and it gives no literal French translation for the English word “trillion”–maybe to avoid the mathematics discussion. This site (which I’m not entirely inclined to trust, but it’ll do for a quick Google) gives a translation to billion. If this is technically correct, is Le Monde just avoiding it due to possible confusion with the differing ways billion/trillion/etc. are used in other languages?
My French dictionary (Compact Oxford Hachette) states that 1 000 000 is un million, 1 000 000 000 is un milliard, and 1 000 000 000 000 (10[sup]12[/sup]) is un billion. I believe that 1 000 000 000 000 000 (1000 billion, or 10[sup]15[/sup]) is un trilliard.
This is what some people call the “long scale” of number names, which the British used to use. It goes: million, thousand million, billion, thousand billion, trillion.
I have that. What I want to know is why, since there’s a perfectly good word for trillion, is Le Monde not using it, instead referring to three trillion dollars as three thousand billion?
ETA: Sorry, Hypnagogic Jerk, somehow I missed the second half of your post. So, the tendency would be always to refer to billions for anything a billion or over in fiscal matters (using the American/English conception of a billion = milliard)?
I guess Le Monde could have talked about deux billions de dollars instead of 2000 milliards de dollars, and it wouldn’t have been inaccurate, but the phrase they used seems more natural to me. I hear about trillions of dollars quite often in English, but more rarely will I hear about billions de dollars in French, possibly because many people wouldn’t know what this number means exactly, especially given the existence of both the short and long scales, while milliard is well-understood.
I’m not French, but Norwegian uses the same system (the proper one ;)) and I guess it’s to do with style and habit. People are used to money being spoken of in terms of millions and milliards and have a good grasp of what that means, and while most people could tell you what a billion means, a thousand milliards is more “intuitive”.
A quick google search on “2000 milliarder” vs “2 billioner” (-er is the Norwegian plural suffix) gives 3190 hits on the first, and only 1150 hits on the latter, with many of those hits being on decimal fractions (8,2 billioner).
I don’t know the words beyond that. It’s striking to me that Chinese needs 10,000 wan to finally get a new unit name. Is this just a Chinese (or maybe Asian) thing, or do other language families also veer from the 1,000-oriented units?
This sentiment is a base lie. The only proper system is scientific notation, where you are never caught short by not knowing an arbitrary word. The only reason it is not used regularly is the appalling innumeracy of the lumpen masses.
“Mil” is archaic, especially when it’s not used in dates and “de” is not necessary. Mille milliards (de mille sabords!) is the correct expression.
I should note that historically, there is some confusion as to the definition of “billion” in French. While the current accepted meaning is 10^12, the Trésor de la langue dictionary gives the definition as either synonymous with milliard or as a million millions.
The origin of the confusion is that until the 18th century, numbers were organized in groups of six digits. Million covered numbers with 7 to 12 digits. The bi- prefix indicates that a billion equals a million to the power of two. However, the system was changed to split the numbers in groups of 3 digits, which lead to a million = 10^6, a billion = 10^9, and a trillion = 10^12. These two counting systems are known as the echelle longue and échelle courte.This page has a chart that outlines the two systems.
