intro

Welcome! This site is for students to practice their English and keep up to date with environmental issues.

TEN MINUTES OF ENGLISH A DAY!
You can find a mixture of reading, crosswords, videos and short English lessons: these will normally be vocabulary, but I may also treat you to some grammar!

There are now over 260 lessons on this blog. Look through the Blog archive, Post labels and Popular Posts to find what you want.

If you want to print a lesson, click on the lesson title and then look for the Print Friendly icon.

''Let nature be your teacher''
William Wordsworth, poet, 1770-1850

''Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift''
Albert Einstein, physicist, 1879-1955

''... to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed''
P.M. Roget, lexicographer, 1779-1869

Friday 15 August 2014

Million, milliard or billion?

Level: Intermediate B1

Please click the 'Print Friendly' icon at the bottom of the page if you want to print this exercise.

Confused about millions, milliards and billions?!
Read on! 


Millions and billions

The long and short scales are two large-number naming systems used throughout the world. Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries and Arabic-speaking countries use the short scale.

Long scale is the English translation of the French term échelle longue. It refers to a system of large-number names in which every new term greater than million is a million times the previous term. Thus, billion means a million millions (1012), trillion means a million billions (1018), and so on.
Short scale is the English translation of the French term échelle courte. It refers to a system of large-number names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000 times the previous term. Thus, billion means a thousand millions (109), trillion means a thousand billions (1012), and so on
For integers less than a thousand million (<109), the two scales are identical. At and above a thousand million (≥109), the two scales diverge by using the same words for different number values. These "false friends" can be a source of misunderstanding!

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the UK used the long scale, while the USA used the short scale. In 1974, the UK government switched to the short scale.

Scientific         Numerals               Short Scale                 Long Scale
notation                                         (English)                      (non-English)
100                   1                                       one                              one
101                   10                                     ten                               ten
102                   100                                   hundred                       hundred
103                   1,000                                thousand                     thousand
104                   10,000                              ten thousand               ten thousand
105                   100,000                            hundred thousand       hundred thousand
106                   1,000,000                         million                         million
109                   1,000,000,000                  billion                          thousand million/milliard
1012                  1,000,000,000,000           trillion                          billion



1 comment:

  1. Lets learn some new words related to environment and enhance our vocabulary only at https://vocabmonk.com.

    ReplyDelete