Re: numbers as letters

Jean-François Colson wrote:
> Philip Newton wrote:
>> FWIW, Lojban uses digit names exclusively, even in numbers larger than
>> 9; for example, "123" is read "pareci", with no morpheme for "hundred"
>> or "ten" used. (Part of the audiovisual isomorphism, I presume.)
>>
>> Cheers,
>
> Very interesting. So I guess lojbanists would translate 10^12 (=
> 1,000,000,000,000 = one British billion = one American trillion) as
> panononononononononononono. Am I right?
No. You forget the comma thousands separator, which is also pronounced,
as ki'o (apostrophe = /h/). Once you have that in, you can skip
superfluous zeros and end up with pa ki'o ki'o ki'o ki'o. Of course,
this is also a bit repetitive, and you’d probably write 10^12 anyway,
which is pronounced pa no te'a pa re.

Also, English speakers more-or-less agree on the American names for
numbers nowadays, especially in finance (which is more-or-less the only
place you’ll see a number like a trillion), so calling it a “British
billion” is probably misleading.

--
Tristan.