Eric in Chicago wrote to ask about some numbers, and there are other numbers that I've been meaning to write about too. So let's have a
numberfest!
Let's start with Eric's question:
I just read that the term "billion" in AmE is different than BrE. In AmE it refers to a one with nine zeros following or 1,000,000,000 but in BrE it refers to a one with twelve zeros following or 1,000,000,000,000, or a "trillion" in AmE. Do they not have a trillion in BrE? and what do they say for 1,000,000,000? one thousand million?
Historically yes, Eric:
AmE billion =
BrE thousand million = 1,000,000,000. However, the effect of
AmE and
AmE media
is definitely beinghas been felt in
BrE, and the use of
billion to mean 1,000,000,000 is
becoming more prevalentnow widespread. For most people, these numbers are so hard to imagine that they probably just think of it as a one followed by lots and lots of zeros. Or, as one is more apt to say in
BrE (than in
AmE), a one followed by lots and lots of
noughts.
About
trillion, the OED says:
The third power of a million; a million billions, i.e. millions of millions. Also, orig. in France and local U.S., a thousand ‘billions’, or 1012 (i.e. the traditional English billion: see BILLION): this sense is now standard in the U.S. and is increasingly common in British usage.
Of the less definite -
illions, OED lists
zillion as 'chiefly U.S.' (although the
Wikipedia article on such numbers uses a
Terry Pratchett quotation in order to attest the word's existence).
Squillion is not marked as U.S., although the OED's earliest citations for it are by Americans. Nevertheless, it sounds a little more BrE to me. Then there are lots of other variations (I tend to say
kajillion, but that's not in the OED yet)--see the Wikipedia link for more on that subject.
Shifting to smaller numbers, there are (
as we've seen before) differences in how
BrE and
AmE speakers express multi-digit numbers. It's definitely a more
AmE trait to express four-digit numbers in hundreds:
2300 =
two thousand, three hundred (BrE or AmE)
or
twenty-three hundred (chiefly AmE)
Often, when I say things like
23 hundred, I can see the cogs turning behind my
BrE-speaking interlocutors' eyes as they try to
visuali{s/z}e what that expression means. Sometimes they ask for a translation. Sometimes they express annoyance! And other times, they marvel at the fact that American addresses sometimes involve four-digit house numbers. Meanwhile, my family used to think it curious that I used to live at number 7. You see, where I come from, there are no house numbers with fewer than three digits. The first house on the street is number 100. Don't ask me why. (Then, there's the fact that British streets sometimes, like in America, have odd house numbers on one side of the street and even numbers on the opposite side. But other times --like on my current street-- they start at 1, continue 2, 3, 4, up one side of the road, then when it gets to the end, the numbers continue down the other side of the road, so that a road with 50 houses would have number 50 directly across from number 1, and on the other end 25 across from 26. But I'm getting away from language, am I not?)
Another number difference that Better Half often remarks upon is the expression of the years of this decade.
BrE speakers tend to include an
and between the
two thousand and the unit number,
while AmE speakers tend not to:
2007 =
BrE typical: two thousand and seven
AmE typical: two thousand seven
Because these tend to be written as Arabic numerals instead of words, it's difficult to 'prove' the extent of these tendencies without access to a recent, well-transcribed spoken corpus of both dialects, which I don't have. However, it has been noted
elsewhere. If anyone else has any facts and figures to back up these observations, by all means, let us know about them!
Postscript: I've now had the chance to discuss this on camera!
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