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Re: How many is a billion?
Posted By: wintermute, on host 65.189.42.201
Date: Sunday, October 15, 2006, at 10:35:27
In Reply To: Re: How many is a billion? posted by Alexfrog on Saturday, October 14, 2006, at 16:29:09:

> I think the Americna version is better because it doesnt skip certain powers of 1000.
>
> What do you call 10^9 in the british system? Its a billion in America, but in the British system its 1000 million. Using two words is worse than using one. Do they have a term for '1000 million' which is easier? I havent herard of it, if there is.
>
> It kindof sucks to have to say 'one hundred thousand million'.

As Darien pointed out, we've already established that the word you're looking for is "milliard". But it's a fairly rare word, principly because you'd be surprised at how infrequently you need to use numbers of that scale in daily conversation.

Also, by the same logic, why not have a single word for "one hundred billion", as that would be easier to say?

winter"I almost never need to use the word 'billion'"mute

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