A Billion is not un Billón


A billion is not un billón, but a million is un millón. What is the meaning of this? It’s all about culture. Let’s start by saying that commas and periods have different functions in English and Spanish when we are dealing with numbers. Here is an example.
In Spanish this is how one thousand is expressed in numerical form: 1.000
In English it is expressed like this: 1,000.
If we are dealing with decimals then it is the opposite.
In Spanish this is how we do it: 2,5    3,7    20,4    7,6
In English they don’t use commas: 2.5    3.7     20.4    7.6
So in English they use commas where we use periods and viceversa.
The differences do not stop there. Here is another case:
                                     English                          Spanish
One thousand                    1,000                             1.000
One million                  1,000,000                      1.000.000
One billion              1,000,000,000         1.000.000.000.000
This proves that one million is un millón but one billion is not un billón. They are different amounts and that explains why we rarely speak of billonarios in Spanish while the word billionaire is more common in English since it really describes a lesser amount.
Which one do you think is the most practical?

Comments

Racionalista said…
Really I didn`t know that fact, I believed that was a billòn but is wrong. But so what is the equivalent word in english for a billòn? And why they use the opposite signs to differenciate between an integer number and a decimal. As a experience is not totally true that in latin america we use the order you say because in Mexico they use points and commas as in the states and also divide like them.. when I see a division was an strange thing something like an inverted operation
August 8, 2012 at 9:18 AM
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