[zelphirkalt]

But then they have that annoying rule about saying a "zero" when there is a 0 for a magnitude between non-zero digits, for example 108 is one-hundred-zero-eight.

[suzakus]

That's because in Chinese it's the higher digit having priority in emissions - if you don't specify zero the it means 180

[zelphirkalt]

Yeah that is weird. Because usually a "十" would mark the ten-count anyway, so saying a single digit could only be the ones-count, but they interpret it then differently to mean 80, even if you do not say "十". To me this is not logical and is unintuitive.

[iopq]

It's actually much easier

When people say in English one hundred thousand one thousand and ten, you will need to visualize the digits

101,010

But in Chinese you say 10 * 10^4, 1 * 10^3, 0, 1 * 10

the zero helps you write a zero after the second one without making a mistake