[tomxor]

Oh crap, how are other countries still using this, is that really true?

[edit] however @treerock is correct britain formally switched to short scale since 1974 so english is unambiguous, in all but historical contexts.

Also recommends using SI prefixes just as done in the article which is unambiguous in all languages. I guess translators must be aware of this when converting words from billion and up.

[pgeorgi]

German has Tausend (1000), Million (1000 Tausend) , Milliarde (1000 Millionen), Billion (1000 Milliarden), Billiarde (1000 Billionen), Trillion (1000 Billiarden), and there aren't even proposals to change, and why should we?

[tomxor]

> and there aren't even proposals to change, and why should we?

becaaause.. it's intermediate scales are un-prefixable, because it names adjacent intermediate orders of magnitude with only subtle mutations of the previous name, because it's inconsistent with itself (<x 10^9), and finally because in 2019 it's extremely ambiguous, in all languages SI prefixes have been around since 1960 all of science and engineering uses these. In other words the same reason English abandoned the long scale.

Then again it was probably far easier for Britain to change in 1974 than it is for the remaining long scale countries to change today since the discrepancy will have been built into all software and systems dealing with currency and other things between countries since then... So i guess you are probably stuck with it and all it's disadvantages whether you are aware of them or not.

[pgeorgi]

> its intermediate scales are un-prefixable

huh? Mrd, Brd, Trd, ...

> it names adjacent intermediate orders of magnitude with only subtle mutations of the previous name

million and ten million are also rather close. So what?

> it's inconsistent with itself (<x 10^9)

Those are explicitly named for historical reasons, which is well in line with how names for numbers are handled: we generally work in a decimal system, yet have "eleven" and "twelve", followed by lastdigit-teen while everything above twenty is decimaldigit-y-lastdigit. (German has similar quirks, although the order remains the same. Still: neunzehn, nine-ten vs. neunundzwanzig, nine-and-twenty).

And let's not start with French (ten, twenty, thirty, fourty, fifty, sixty, sixty-ten, four-twenties, four-twenties-ten, hundred). [to be fair, Switzerland and Belgium fixed that in their dialects, using septante, huitante, nonante]

> in 2019 it's extremely ambiguous

It was ambiguous since the 17th century when the short scale was invented.

I'm not sure if the UK officially switched by now, all I see is a random statement by a Prime Minister 45 years ago that I'm not sure is normative (https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1...)

> in all languages SI prefixes have been around since 1960

Sure, and it's used sometimes, but are SI prefixes defined as normative numbering scheme anywhere? That is, which language and which country uses Gigagrams officially?

[tomxor]

Majority of your arguments against it are that other bad things also exist... really?

Also I am British, i've never come across long scale until now, we definitely don't use it, and haven't in a very long time. I'm also well traveled but apparently not enough in Europe to notice this.