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Subject: 
Re: Space Shuttle Costs
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Tue, 15 Dec 1998 20:29:14 GMT
Original-From: 
Jonathan Woodward <WOODWARD@GUESSWORKstopspammers.COM>
Viewed: 
1232 times
  
At 01:51 PM 12/15/98 -0500, Pete Hardie wrote:
Nick Taylor wrote:
Dear Mr. Rawding - - -
   To _most_ speakers of English 'five billion' does _not_ equal
5,000,000,000.
Can you point out some statistics that support this - I know that the
British hold this view, but I wonder about Canadians, Aussies, Indians,
etc.

Populations, in thousands:
UK          58,649
Australia   18,520
New Zealand  3,796
Canada      30,563
           -------
           111,528

US         274,028
           -------
           274,028

    (Figures from "http://www.popin.org/pop1998/".)

    -Unless I missed 160 million speakers of British English, I don't
think I need to comment further with regards to population.  With regards
to nomenclature:

Number                  US Word     UK Word
1,000                   thousand    thousand
1,000,000               million     million
1,000,000,000           billion     milliard or "thousand million"
1,000,000,000,000       trillion    billion
1,000,000,000,000,000   quadrillion "thousand billion"
etc.

    -Did I get that right?

    -JW


Jonathan Woodward  woodward@guesswork.com  http://www.io.com/~woodward/
Removing attributions is a sin.



Message has 4 Replies:
  Re: Space Shuttle Costs
 
I really don't want to get involved in this rather quirky debate, but there are 982,223 thousand people in India (same source), the majority of whom speak English in the UK style in addition to their own regional dialects. I've always wondered how (...) (26 years ago, 15-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
  RE: Space Shuttle Costs
 
(...) Hang on The population of the world is ~ 4 Billion (uh,oh there's another argument looming), No matter how you define billion your figures fall way short, Sure not all (most) of the world is english speaking (but we have already had anecdotal (...) (26 years ago, 15-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
  Re: Space Shuttle Costs
 
We (Canadians) are with the Ugly Americans on this one... sorry we don't count in the UK-world total. 5 billion = 5 000 000 000 in the Great White North. LINC (26 years ago, 15-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
  Re: Space Shuttle Costs
 
(...) India? China? We're not just talking _first_ language here... Jasper (26 years ago, 16-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Space Shuttle Costs
 
Dear Mr. Rawding - - - To _most_ speakers of English 'five billion' does _not_ equal 5,000,000,000. Comments such as yours are what has given rise to the "Ugly American" syndrome. - - - Nick - - - (...) (26 years ago, 15-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)

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