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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

One would think that a metric country would adopt "k"/kilo as the indicator for thousands and "m"/mega for millions.

Still I suppose it's better than sussing out whether someone is British and using "long" billions.

(in most of the world, "billion" = 10 to the 9th power; in older British usage still sometime seen, "billion" = 10 to the 12th power, and 10^9 is "thousand million")

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Well they're french, so M stands for Mille (one thousand). MM is just a thousand squared, and MMM is a thousand qubed.

Once you understand this system you might also understand why the long system makes more sense.

  1000                 = Mille     M
  1000 000             = Million   MM
  1000 000 000         = Milliard  MM M
  1000 000 000 000     = Billion   MM MM 
  1000 000 000 000 000 = Billiard  MM MM M

in the short system the billion (nine zeros) has nothing to do with two. while in the long system it represents double as many zeros as the million. a trillion has three times the Zeros. -ard suffix? add 3 zeros

As someone who used to speak decent French, you will never convince me that the language is rational with respect to numbers. The sometimes-decimal/sometimes-vigesimal thing still makes my head spin all these years later when I hear numbers being spoken in French.

"Still I suppose it's better than sussing out whether someone is British and using "long" billions."

Britain does not use "long" billions. Not since the 1970s or so. Now days, billion always means 1000 million.

Many other European languages, on the other hand, do use the long scale.

That’s correct. But when speaking or writing in English, the English conventions should be used.

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