Wonderful words for big numbers

[@jojo.s_bekaar_adventures]

Also in Urdu possibly in Hindi as well we have words like "Areb" which is a 100 Crore or exactly a Billion and "Khareb" which is 100 Areb or 100 Billion Some sources say there is another word "Nīlem" which is 100 Khareb or 10 Trillion, but I've never seen it being used So traditionally speaking in Hindi/Urdu the highest you can count is 10 Nīlem or 100 Trillion

[@jojo.s_bekaar_adventures]

My comment got pinned?!!! Dude, no frickin wayyy Btw thanks 😊😊😊

[@AkshayVasant]

It goes on in Hindi, my mom taught me counting in Hindi and I learnt the system went like lakh, crore, arab, kharab, neel, padma, shankh. In practical usage though, I have never heard anything after arab. We measure the world population as 7 arab plus. But after that, even news and books shift to billion and trillion. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system

[@ComicalFlask]

I like that India's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire uses the term "crorepati" in place of millionaire, which means Indian contestants win 10 times more than a million (in rupees, but 10 times less then a million in pounds).

[@raymasraymas]

@@AkshayVasant agree, but while those words are known in the counting systems of South Asia, it is important to remember that only lakhs and crores made their way into English. For example a cheque written in India will say “one lakh”, not “one hundred thousand”. The other words you named do not make it into written or spoken English.

[@prakhyatpandey5341]

We also have Padma (100 Nēil) and Shankh (100 padma), where the highest number we ever needed to measure was 10000 shankh...

[@Aboz]

Thank you for covering Myriad. It means a lot.

[@rmdodsonbills]

Well done!

[@divarachelenvy]

Haha 😄

[@tmbarral664]

Indeed the right place to play with words ;)

[@doodlegoat]

As well, one can at least Google myriameter = 10 km

[@blueberrypanquakes]

Plethora.

[@ZiggyBoon]

Back in the 80s I worked as a foreign exchange trader, often specializing in the Japanese Yen. Whenever I called a bank in London to get a quote for a specific quantity of Yen, I’d express it in “yards”, which was short for “milliard”. But when calling a bank in New York, the quote would be expressed for millions. Switching between milliard and million was a skill in itself.

[@ronaldnixon8226]

Not true

[@mygills3050]

@@ronaldnixon8226because I’m definitely gonna trust Ronald Nixon

[@TheEarthCreature]

@@ronaldnixon8226 Explain?

[@Billy-q5s]

@@TheEarthCreature Millard=billion not million

[@sudonim7552]

Interesting to note that there is also a word for ten thousand in Chinese and many other East Asian languages. The Chinese word is 万, pronounced "wan." That's why you often hear phrases like "may the emperor live ten thousand years," because in the original Chinese, it's just "may the emperor live a 万 of years." So essentially it is the Asian version of "myriad" except still used in it's original meaning. "May the emperor live a myriad of years" would be a great way to translate it because in this context it's a metaphorical 万 and not a literal 万. This is what the Japanese "banzai" and the Korean "manse" translate to as well.

[@keithklassen5320]

Isn't there also an idiom where "the ten thousand things" means "everything", kind of like "the universe"?

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

And the Chinese say "yi" (億) or "wanwan" (萬萬) for 100 million.

[@MattMcIrvin]

I know that from the number tiles in mah jong. Some sets use a different character for "ten thousand" though. (Apparently the suits all originally represented numbers of coins. The circles are individual coins, the "bamboos" are really strings of 100 coins, and the character tiles represent myriads of coins.)

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

@@MattMcIrvin And wan is sometimes written as 卍!

[@halohaalo2583]

@@Blaqjaqshellaq four sided shuriken strikes again! The manji and swastika are related symbols. Actually buddhism ended up spreading Indian symbols like the lotus and the swastika throughout asia, but it also carried with it Sanskrit. Some very common Japanese and Chinese words originate from Sanskrit (zen->dhanya)

[@valgalloway6914]

I'm 76 and I remember when I realised that American "billionaires", whilst very wealthy, were not quite as wealthy as I'd thought they were.

[@duncanluciak5516]

Gee, a mere thousand million, instead of a million million.

[@impwolf]

11:34 i’m sure someone’s already pointed this out but, edward kasner’s nephew originally coined googolplex to mean “one followed by as many zeroes as you can write until you get tired”, until kasner reworked it to be more mathematically rigorous. it’s a lot like the origin of “thousand” in that way, actually

[@Juarqua]

According to a fair amount of numberphile videos quite a lot of british scientists would immediately agree with you on that comment you've made in this video about reinstating the long counting system including milliards and billiards as soon as possible.

[@TerryBollinger]

Well now, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Numberphiles emphatically are not scientists, they are number-lovers! You'd get better stats from lab scientists and engineers who use modern number prefixes to be as precise as possible when communicating critical data. Yes, modern large-number words are messy and ugly, but they are also _understood,_ without ambiguity, by the vast majority of English-speaking scientists, engineers, and economists. I love the history of words, and can recall poring through dictionaries as a child to find out where a word came from and how new words were created. But let's not forget that the central purpose of words is not just history, but something called communication. If you forget that part of it, you lose track of why we have all these funny sounds coming out of our mouths in the first place.

[@Juarqua]

@@TerryBollinger You're right, words and speach are more about communication than about anything else. In order to avoid those ambiguities you rightfully mentioned in your comment scientists more often than not use the so called 'scientific notation'. Using this notation the number 1,000 for example becomes 1*10^3 which is as unambiguous as it can get.

[@costakeith9048]

@@TerryBollinger No, most of us are mathematicians and would never want to be associated with something so crass and vulgar as the sciences. But one thing we mathematicians are not is ambiguous, we go further out of our way than any other discipline to precisely define our terms, sets, objects, and, indeed, anything we work with. And people have created conventions for base 12 arithmetic, none of which are any more ambiguous than the standard system of base 10 arithmetic. Ultimately, mathematicians are the only people who use numbers in such a way that the radix of the system actually matters (except maybe computer engineers, but they're forced to work in base 2 no matter what), if you're just going to turn everything into a decimal and not worry about exact solutions it really doesn't matter if you're using base 10 or base 12 or base 23, it's all completely arbitrary.

[@TerryBollinger]

@@costakeith9048 that was a fun read, thanks! Now, to be precise, there have been periods of time when computer designers experimented with other bases, including base 3 and, my all-time favorite, base -2 (try it, it's fun!) You might be surprised how much I've been looking into the issue of mathematical precision in the past few months, such as how the utterly non-physics-compatible trick of using piecemeal functions with hidden infinities at their edges to achieve oh-so-comforting infinite differentiability in distribution functions that, at their limits, are used to formalize the casually introduced Dirac delta function. Ah, and sets... what an astonishingly cognitive-capability-dependent concept those are! Math is incredibly powerful, but it has... well, interesting issues, not the least of which is that until mathematicians recognize and formalize how much their survival-shortcut-designed brains are contributing to their emotions of "certainty," it is impossible to be formal in a fully precise way.

[@johnridout6540]

@@costakeith9048 In computing hexadecimal is more common than binary as it's easier to work with but converts to and from binary very simply. Practically speaking in computing there are only three numbers; zero, one and many.

[@IkkezzUsedEmber]

In dutch, especially because being proficient at english is extremely common, large numbers after a million can start becoming very confusing. In dutch, we go from _miljoen_ (million) to _miljard_ (milliard) to _biljoen_ (billion) to _biljard_ (billiard) to triljoen (trillion) so million, milliard, billion, billiard, trillion. while in english that'd be million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion. This is so confusing that I once herd a university professor express chance as being nearly "one in a _biljoen_ ".while he meant to say _miljard_ , confusing the english billion for the dutch biljoen

[@maciejzettt]

But it's a regular and defined convention. I'm pissed off that again something irrational but American won. You take multiples of 6 zeroes and that's the -ion base for the number. A thousand times that is a -iard. It could have been so simple.

[@ryianwarner7038]

We use the same words - miljard, miljoen, biljoen, triljoen - in Afrikaans, a language spoken in South Africa, and of which Dutch is one of the parent languages. Sadly, due to global linguistic influences, these words are starting to only be used by language purists.

[@sehrgut]

Same thing in german. The worst however is that most people don´t even know about it and think a english billion is a Billion instead of a Milliarde. Makes reading news hilarious sometimes...

[@MagereHein]

Interestingly and completely unrelatedly, Dutch has a word for 100,000 in money that is occasionally used more widely: a _ton_ that survived the transition of _gulden_ to Euro.

[@keithmills778]

A linguist dies and, at the funeral, the mourners are asked if any of them would like to say a few words. One of his colleagues steps up, looks at the assembled group, and just says, “Myriad.” As he is returning to his seat, he passes by the widow who stops him and says, “Thank you. That means a lot.”

[@_v53]

I was bizarrely first taught the "british billion" scale as a kid in the 90s, but then everything else used the modern one. It left me really confused, knowing there had been a change but not understanding why/when, perpetually gaslit by my confused understanding of the correct representation of the number. This language business is serious business, it broke a small boy's mind!

[@andreasrehn7454]

same.... in particular, as in my mothertongue German a billion remained a million million....

[@geraldmcmullon2465]

@@andreasrehn7454 Yes, except when Germans speak in English and use the short billion so I never know for sure. Using a thousand million for a billion is wrong. But the Americans also adopted the smaller gallon for volume. Ban this old words for metric prefixes and be done with it.

[@Mentocthemindtaker]

The US billion has its base in the financial sector. Essentially the super rich wanted a way to differentiate between the 1 000 000+aires and the 1 000 000 000+aires as they were essentially different classes. The word "million" was already in common usage, so to use a similar word such as "billion" was done for simplicity. So the answer as to "why" is capitalism and status basically.

[@Dancestar1981]

It hasn’t changed the Americans just believe it has

[@Mentocthemindtaker]

@@Dancestar1981 Yeah but they'll damn well make sure _everyone_ knows about it!

[@JakubChalupnik]

Actually, permille (written as "promile") is used pretty often. While talking about beer, "promile" is used to specify the amount of alcohol in blood. In other words: your myriad of beers will leave you with a few permilles :)

[@gabenugget114]

what about the ‰o?

[@KodakYarr]

​@@gabenugget114 % = per cent ‰ = per mille

[@gabenugget114]

@@KodakYarr i mean the per myriad

[@ivoivanov7407]

@@gabenugget114 don't think "per myriad" is used. But in chemistry and pharmacy, for really small amounts (or concentrations) "parts per million" and "parts per billion" are used, no special symbols, abbreviated as ppm and ppb.

[@Arqane]

At least in America, a mill is still used by real estate agents, as tax rates on the properties are measured by the thousandths (so relating to mille). They also use the term millage. Though I think most Americans would rather not use the term as we tend to be fond of our own usual versions of counting.

[@dragoncurveenthusiast]

When I read the original Sherlock Holmes stories I came across the number "three and twenty". As a native German speaker I found this fascinating, since this implied that English used the same strange ordering as German (still) does, but must have switched it around from "three and twenty" to "twenty three" at some point. Only the numbers from 13 to 19 seem to remain in the strange backwards order. I'd be so interested in hearing what you have to say about this! I also wonder how many English speakers are aware that their ordering is flipped for the numbers from 13 to 19 compared to all the other numbers.

[@jauneetbrun]

Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie

[@bigaspidistra]

You can still sometimes hear people use "five and twenty" particularly in the context of time (five and twenty past eight). More common in some dialects.

[@maiaallman4635]

Good point! Afrikaans -drie en twintig

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

@@jauneetbrun A lot of German reminds me of the archaic English we encounter in nursery rhymes. ("Fourscore and seven years ago" and "Nevermore" also have a Germanic sound.)

[@DarkrarLetsPlay]

But is it really flipped? While counting it is very easy to say the changing part of the word first.

[@Electrowave]

You've just explained my confusion with Billion when I was growing up in South Africa in the 70's. I was taught it was a Million Million at school but after school I hardly used the word for a while. Being in computers the number soon became common but I was now living in UK (in the 80's) and I was arguing with people about my version of Billion vs their version of Billion. Your video has just made sense of it all if the value changed in the 70's. My memory isn't kaput after all!

[@magnushultgrenhtc]

That's also the reason for the word: bi-million. Followed by tri-million etc., each time with another six zeros added.

[@Electrowave]

@@magnushultgrenhtc 👍

[@beageler]

Kaputt has two ts :-)

[@jishcatg]

@@beageler Not in English.

[@beageler]

@@jishcatg Let me guess, you were one of the ones responsible for "literally?" That is like literally cool!

[@cpt.flamer7184]

A hundred is a very interesting word, because in pretty much all descendants of PIE language it comes from the same PIE word and it reflects changes that occured in general in those languages. Original PIE word was something like "kmtom", at some point in the east "k" sound became "s" (Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages, e.g. "satam" in Sanskrit, "sto" in Slavic lang.), but in the west it remained "k" ("Centum" in Latin, the letter 'c' was pronounced as 'k' in old Latin, "(he)katon" in old Greek, "he" here is "one" or "single", English word "single" and Greek "he" have the same root ;p). Later in Proto-Germanic there was a great sound shift and one of the sounds that shifted was "k" that became "h". It's propably a bit off the topic, but i just find it interesting, how European and even Iranian and Indian languages are conected to each other ;p

[@RobWords]

It's not off topic at all. It's glorious!

[@uweschollmeyer9409]

I was waiting throughout the first part of the video when Rob would turn to the term hundred as formerly used in administration and still being used to vacate a seat in the House of Commons (the Chiltern Hundreds).

[@simonbone]

One theory is that "*kmtom" (hundred) is a contraction of "ten tens" - *dekm(t) being the (likely) PIE word for ten.

[@johnhockenhull2819]

A Hundred was also a division of a county in England - as in a county was split into several hundreds.

[@AnAverageItalian]

@@RobWords An even more fun fact about the centum/satem differentiation is that it wasn't defined exclusively by eastness/westness. We actually have some outliers: Tocarian, an Indoeuropan language spoken in odiern Xinjiang, in China (yes, there actually was an IE language in China), even though was considerably eastern, had känt/kante (depending on the variety) as its word for 100. This was a revolutionary discovery and made us rethink about what we knew of the centum/satem origin story. Now the scientific consensus states that the satem innovation happened later than what we knew of, spreading from the centre of IE influence outwards, and so the only languages that remained untouched by this innovation were the Occidental IE languages, and Tocarian!

[@errorist68]

So enlightening! As a non native English speaker, these gems of info bursts are so good to know. Especially in my case, as I gradually reduce my use of English and forgetfulness seeps in with age, very necessary to revive it. Thank you! Wish you all the best with your venture!

[@stevemuhlberger]

Here's a suggestion for a subject. Back in the 30s and 40s an English author named Leslie Barringer wrote some beautiful historical and historical fantasy novels. Barringer was obviously a very learned man and loved Middle English, which shaped his own prose. His novel *Kay the Left-Handed* is set in the twelfth century and to get readers in the mood he used a lot of old words and constructions. (I would guess that many of them are from Yorkshire and the north of England.) Barringer was clearly aiming at a certain type of reader; I am one of them -- being a medieval historian and having had some experience of surviving Yorkshire usage, in person and in books. But I was flabbergasted by this sentence: "Down, up, down went the track--now a mere sheep-walk -- along the flank of Greygarth, where blackish screes patterned the bents and field rush gave warning of quags." This describes a landscape, but without a lot of thought it was like a foreign language. There are a lot of obscure words in current rural usage in Britain that would be fun to explore. BTW, do you know what "Chose how" means?

[@vincentng2392]

While there is controversy about the definition of "billion" in English, there is also argument on the definition of a Chinese numerical character 兆 (zhao4 in Mandarin / siu6 in Cantonese). While Mandarin speakers tend to define it as "trillion" (10^12), Cantonese speakers tend to define it as "ten quadrillion" (10^16).

[@RobWords]

Blimey, that's no small difference

[@chairwood]

why is there numbers after the letters for English transliteration. is it the intonation

[@vincentng2392]

@@chairwood Yes

[@Anonymous-df8it]

What does Cantonese call a trillion?

[@vincentng2392]

@@Anonymous-df8it 一萬億

[@francesco8723]

In Italy, where I live, it's not at all uncommon to use the sign ‰ (read "permille") as well as the sign % (read "percento"). The ‰ sign indicates a fraction in base 1000

[@katam6471]

Same in Sweden

[@jarekferenc1149]

Same in Poland. We have "procent" (%) and "promil" (the same character as Francesco typed). Typically, we use "promil" in only one instance: the amount of alcohol in blood.

[@zagrizena]

Same in Slovenia :)

[@GreenLarsen]

same in Denmark

[@ingvarjensen1088]

@@jarekferenc1149 Same in Germany!

[@olivier2553]

Our students from India use lakh all the time. The first time I heard it, I was with an Indian professor who explained to me what it means. While new word, I was not that surprised as Thai language also has a designated word for 100,000. As you mentioned counting to 12, I thought you would also mention the word for 144 (12 dozen).

[@batya7]

12 dozen = 1 gross

[@olivier2553]

@@batya7 Thanks, I was not sure, same word in French "grosse". And I should know the Thai word, but it is that part of vocabulary I don't use often enough to be able to recall it, but that I will understand if I hear it in context.

[@thaimapping]

Thai also has a different word for 10000

[@olivier2553]

@@thaimapping Chai krub. Although, when I was still very new at speaking Thai, I used "sip pan" and it was understood.

[@donkensler]

Once upon a time I worked on a project in India, and had to get used to lakh and crore. I had forgotten about these until I saw this video. Speaking about counting by twelves, it's interesting that English has the word "dozen" for twelve of something. This seems to be fading away in the U.S. A few years ago I went into a shop and asked for a dozen donuts or somesuch, and the young lady behind the counter had no idea what I was asking for. But we still buy eggs by the dozen.

[@carenmontgomery2384]

yipeeeeeee- I just happened upon your website. Discovering word origin has always fascinated me! I love reading the comments and finding people replying from all over the world.

[@niiflinstone23]

Language reveals so much about a people's conception of reality. And that's why I love this channel. Myriad thanks to you, Rob.

[@KomradZX1989]

You just answered a question I thought of circa 1995 when I was in first grade. I can remember asking the teacher how come 11 and 12 aren’t “eleven-teen and twelve-teen?” and the kids laughed at me 😂 Now I’m 33 and just got the answer! I love all your videos. I think the sweet spot for your stuff is 10-15 min like your most recent videos. 10/10, can’t wait to learn more stuff I never knew!

[@althejazzman]

It wouldn't be eleven-teen and twelve-teen though, because that would add 10 to those numbers and make 21 and 22. The question is why aren't they called one-teen and two-teen?

[@vnXun]

@@althejazzman Or something like firsteen and second-teen, since we have thirteen and fifteen not three-teen and five-teen

[@HotelPapa100]

That made me wonder if the French have some hexadecimal history... There's 10 kinds of people. Those who know hexadecimal, and F the rest...

[@garylshelton2463]

​​@@althejazzman indeed, in Chinese the word system uses their words for 10-1 (ten-one) to mean 11 and their words for 10-2 to mean 12, etc. all the way to 2-10 (two-ten) to mean 20 and 2-10-1 to mean 21, 2-10-2 to mean 22 and so on until they get to their distinct number for 100.

[@garylshelton2463]

​@@HotelPapa100 why don't the French have distinct numbers for 80 and 90? It has always seemed so unwieldy to have to say 4-20 (four -twenty) for 80 and 4-20-10 (four-twenty-ten) for 90. Yes, the French gain some of this tongue time back with their use of the short single syllable word cent for hundred, but still... what's going on with 80 and 90 there?

[@hydro63]

In Slovakia, ‰ ("promile" in slovak) is widely used. For example, until recently it was officially used to measure the amount of alcohol in blood when you got drunk and police pulled you over. Another example is slope measuring, where 5‰ means 5 meters height differance on 1000 meters (trains have max slope of 2,5% - 4% so it is better to use ‰ instead of % in this situation)

[@onkelhenning]

We do the same in Denmark 🙂

[@kerendn]

Promil is used in Hebrew as well to figuratively mean a small fraction, and also to literally mean one in a thousand, or a tenth of a percent. According to the Hebrew Wikipedia entry, it's used mostly in economics and in nature studies. In English I think ppm (parts per million) is more commonly used.

[@Jost2011]

Same in Germany! 🥂🍻🥴🚓

[@hassegreiner9675]

DUI is officially termed 'promillekørsel' (promille driving) in Denmark and refers to the relative amount of alcohol in your bloodstream measured in promille.

[@odszczepciesie5128]

In Poland you can have up to 0,2‰ alcohol in blood without punishment, if you drive a car.

[@ronaldfranke9225]

Growing up in the 1970s US, we learned that “billion” meant a lot more to British than it did to us. My classmates were incredulous: “Say what?!” My math teacher couldn’t really explain it though. Happily, back in the day, my father’s engineering career had taken him to Southern Rhodesia. He loved to talk about such things and had long since introduced me to the “British billion,” so I was able to clear up the confusion in class.

[@aramisortsbottcher8201]

Yeah, I am German and it is alwys a little confusing hearing of yet an other billionaire and thinking they have 1,000,000,000,000.

[@JohnRay1969]

And for those of us whose father's didn't work in Southern Rhodesia and grew up in the USA what is a "British billion"?

[@zebbedee]

british billion is a bi million so 10^12, a trillion a tri million 10^18 quadrillion a quad million 10^24 etc but nowadays a billion is 10^9 trillion 10^12, made more sense as it was though

[@JohnRay1969]

@@zebbedee thank you

[@torzsmokus]

@@JohnRay1969 why not watch the video? ;P

[@vikingspud]

Now I finally know where lakh came from! When I was in India, I was fascinated by this way of counting. (It's not hard to spend 1 lakh of rupees) I am also fascinated the word myriad means 10,000 and how in Chinese numbering system (which also used by the Koreans and Japanese), the number 万 (萬） means 10,000.

[@ADEpoch]

Thank you for not talking down to us. I don’t know any of this stuff, but the way you impart your knowledge makes me feel positive, not negative. I want to learn, not be told I don’t know. Thank you. Be my English teacher anytime!

[@manustorm5617]

10:43 In my school book of history, it stated that: "there are 7 billion people in the world", which was a bit of a problem because it was a spanish book, so it would be a thousand million or a milliard, (here is more common to hear thousand million than milliard)

[@zenith1047]

Along the same lines, I once read something about how a number of places where "40" was used in the English translation of the old testament was just in place of a concept of "a big number" in the original language. So "40 days and 40 nights" while Noah was afloat or Moses' 40 years in the desert, etc. were just "a long time" and not literally 40 of those things.

[@batya7]

Biblical 40 is literally the value 40 inthe original Hebrew, not "big number." Forty years in the desert, Moses was 40 days on the mountain to receive the Torah.

[@trueriver1950]

So some people claim. Others (like another reply) books to the number being literally true. My own view is that we don't really know either way, and that it doesn't really alter the devotional value of the scriptures anyway.

[@crabby7668]

Apparently the word quarentine is based on the Italian for 40 days which was how long they kept diseased ships offshore until safe to bring them in to port.

[@nilskangas4188]

Hebrew has/had indeed ways to express large numbers. e.g. EX 38:26: "603550 men". The 40 years was always referred to literally, e.g. Jos 14:10. The ~700 km of journey took months to walk according to the texts, followed by some 39 years mostly camping around Kadesh Barnea. 40 is often said to symbolize "time of ordeal, testing". Also it is said to signify one generation.

[@trueriver1950]

@@nilskangas4188 and there is a direct textual reference that it was a generation so that example does not rely on the 40yrs being figuratively a generation. Of the Israelites who left Egypt exactly two actually entered the "promised land", everyone else of that generation died en route, even Moses himself only got to see the land from a mountain top, according to the scriptural account Mnemonic poem from my Sunday School days: Joshua the son of Nun And Caleb the son of Jephunneh Were the only two That ever got through To the land of the milk and the honey

[@TammuzKay]

Heck-a-ton definitely sounds like a good term for something there's a lot of.

[@rmdodsonbills]

Certainly more friendly than "sh*t ton" which a hear a lot around here.

[@johndododoe1411]

@@rmdodsonbills Depends if you think the fires of H are less scary than a useful amount of natural fertilizer.

[@rmdodsonbills]

@@johndododoe1411 The fires of heck?

[@12what34the]

We also use f*ck-ton occasionally here in Canada, in addition to sh*t-ton. Not sure what the equivalent metric or imperial would be but it's a lot either way

[@golwenlothlindel]

@@12what34the hilariously, a lot of people in the States will use use "metric sh*t-ton" to mean a larger quantity than whatever a normal sh*t-ton is. I have no idea why since metric units are usually smaller than imperial ones, not larger (an inch is larger than a centimeter, a mile is longer than a kilometer etc). Though "sh*t-load" is generally replacing "sh*t-ton" here, which gives up on the ruse of this word referring to an actual number.

[@steamboy101]

The origins of common words that imply a number, such as: single (1), couple (2), pair (2), twin or twain (2), double (2), few (3), triple (3), several (4 or more, generally), dozen (12), score (20), and gross (as in a grouping) would be interesting as well. I really do like the channel!

[@19683]

Gross is 12 dozen

[@steamboy101]

@@19683 A gross is a 144 of something.

[@19683]

@@steamboy101 Yes 12 x 12 = 144 12 = 1 doz

[@steamboy101]

@@19683 12 = 1 dozen 12 x 12 = 144 = 1 gross en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_(unit) I agree with you :)

[@Dr_Jeff]

I'm a seasoned electronics engineer, and in my youth I used to play with valve radios, TVs and amplifiers. I had a good engineering textbook printed in the 60s which referred to long wave radio waves as 'myriametric' when their wavelength was in tens of thousands of metres. It even referred to the prefix 'my' to denote ten thousand (pronounced myria). Hence 3 myHz would be 30 kHz etc.. No etymology was given but I had remembered this quirk of 10,000 = myria. Your presentation has clarified an oddity I have remembered for many years!

[@rosiefay7283]

7:42 Lakh and crore could be quite useful. We have no words to cover the semantic space between "thousands" and "millions" -- unless you count "myriad" which you mention. Lakh deals with that lack. Crore helps fill the gap between millions and billions. 7:58 Indeed, one could say by crores of people...

[@svc6550]

There were a myriad of reasons I felt this channel was worth subscribing to. Would love to learn more about whether the subjunctive was used more regularly in English as in Romance languages, and if so, how it might have differed.

[@paulfaulkner6299]

As someone presently learning Spanish and constantly falling over this I have only recently gotten my head around 2 things 1/ We tend to use infinitive constructions to convey the same thing / idea, 2/ *ONLY* the 3rd person singular is different from the indicative in all English verbs _except "to be"_ but there are these few ways to get into their train of thinking and "see it in action"; the first is you _MUST_ use / get the word *THAT* as the linking word to make the subordinate clause in the subjunctive 'appear' and secondly, you can only 'see' it in action (meaning a difference in the inflection and spelling of the verbs) if you use the 3rd person singular (except when using "to be") else you won't notice it as different anyway. What is the difference in the 3rd person? *_it drops the 'S'_* Examples: Getting the word THAT in it sentence in place of an infinitive. Instead of saying "He needs to buy eggs from the corner shop." say "It is necessary *that* he *buy* eggs from the corner shop. Instead of "He wants her to tidy her room" say "He wants *that* she *tidy* her room. And always incorporating THAT to begin the subjunctive clause: It's disgraceful *that* the prime minister *lie* to parliament; It's imperative *that* he *understand* spoken Russian; The bank manager hopes *that* he *repay* the loan; Your future success demands *that* you *be* curious. The English subjunctive IS there, we use (the idea of) it all the time but it's hidden in plain sight either in with the indicative (because the forms for I, you, we & they are all the same anyway) or because we use "subjective infinitive constructions" to convey 'subjunctive' meaning... And this really isn't very well explained by any of the ENGLISH SPEAKING authors of any of the *_myriad_* of 'learn Spanish' books I've read trying to get my brain around poor explanations. _The above examples are my 'foggy' understanding of what appears to work when translating._ Good luck!

[@12what34the]

This comment is too wholesome, I'm out of here

[@pimpozza]

So glad Rob left his new friend in the vid! 🤣 This channel is not only interesting and educational.. it's full of humour too! 10k subs? Not any more.. Rob now unsurprisingly has 45k and this vid was only uploaded a week ago. This channel is going places.. 👍👏

[@sandra.helianthus]

Wow. It shows 2 month ago now - and 142 000 subs 😮

[@LitoMike]

152k

[@MrVvulf]

The fellow who dropped in had just finished off the myriad of beers Rob left behind.

[@johnDukemaster]

@@MrVvulf And now more than 200 000!

[@fdm-r5i]

June 16, 2024.....501k....congratulations

[@thomasmacdiarmid8251]

You may appreciate this quote and poem - “Nature, it seems, is the popular name for milliards and milliards and milliards of particles playing their infinite game of billiards and billiards and billiards.” ― Piet Hein When I first heard this, I thought Hein had played games with the word millions to make a rhyme for billiards. I was pleasantly surprised from your video to learn that milliards is really a big-number word.

[@skathwoelya2935]

I really enjoyed this video. The way Celtic languages still count in twenties (and the way French does a bit) ties in with a hundred being 120. Fascinating stuff.

[@petecopeland9906]

per mil is used quite often in geochemistry when the differences between the measurements is expected to be only a few parts per thousand.

[@PaulPoobySmith]

Hi Rob, you've found a fascinating niche in which to explore with these videos. Not only do you have a charismatic delivery and good comic sensibilities, but it seems to me you're a language archeologist revealing artifacts from the past that make sense of something we use every day. Its consistently entertaining, and provides lots of 'AHA' moments ( and no, thats not an Alan Partridge reference). I am delighted to see that you are currently experiencing a well-deserved tsunami of subscribers. I dont think you've seen the start of how popular this channel will become.

[@ultartherobot4345]

If you like this type language archeology, I recommend "The history of English" podcast.

[@nickf3242]

This was a good video. I liked it a lot. Beautiful scripting as always. Super entertaining and so easy to follow especially with the graphics. I love your demeanor:) Please don't change! I'm so happy for all your success and channel growth. I also loved how you kept your friend in the video, that was fun too. Can't wait for the next one.

[@frankboulton2126]

I study Sanskrit - the indulgence of my old age. When talking about higher numbers, the teacher listed laksha = lakh or 1,00,000 or one hundred thousand and koti = crore or 1,00,00,000 or ten million. A Fijian Hindi speaker commented that "lakh" and "crore" are not used, which may be true for Fijian Hindi. The class was surprised by my comment that the were used in my dialect of English. The North Staffordshire regiment was the one sent out to India, and so in my youth one would quite commonly hear the two words in Stoke-on-Trent especially among ex-military men.

[@AustinCDavis]

Totally agree with bringing back milliard, billiard, etc. as steps between million, billion, etc. As an American, the way we do it is simpler, but as a mathematician, the milliard convention makes so much more sense.

[@AnkerPeet]

I found your channel a couple of days ago and have been really enjoying going through all your videos! I love finding more people out in the world that are also fascinated by languages and the ways they evolve, and how they relate.

[@DJKLProductions]

For me personally, it would be interesting to know more about the conjunctive. I know there are already videos out there in the vastness of KZbin, but your way of explaining helps me best to understand things and phenomena of the English language, not to mention your humour!

[@mariposahorribilis]

I'm old enough to remember the 'proper' billion, and I'm all in favour of bringing it back. The potential for commercial and scientific confusion when one party is not British (or American) must be enormous!

[@rogerszmodis]

Anyone who needs to know the difference would be using 10^9 or 10^12 depending on the local convention. They would use the number not the arbitrary name we gave it.

[@Timberwolf69]

@@rogerszmodis Scientists, most likely. Commercial? I doubt that. One place that comes to my mind that would have had (and sometimes still might) to face confusion about the milliard/billion is in the news. And the average Joe on the street that doesn't know english (or only rudimentary) will always be confused by this.

[@kap10phil]

Loving your channel all the way from 🇰🇪 Kenya.Keep it up Rob! You should have been my English teacher.

[@RobWords]

Great to have you on board!

[@gasdive]

When I was in school in Australia in the late 60's, it was milliard and a billon meant a million million. So certainly living memory.

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

Another example of duodecimal language is "dozen" for twelve, "gross" for twelve squared (144), and "great gross" for twelve cubed (1728). That -red ending can also be seen in "kindred," which means something like "as good as family (kin)." Does the sport of billiards get its name from the large number?

[@JNCressey]

and "nif" is 36 (ie 6 squared) in the Ndom language. They use base-6 which is a pretty *nifty* way to count.

[@Ggdivhjkjl]

Yes. Billiards is called that because of the number of points needed to win.

[@JNCressey]

@@Ggdivhjkjl, how long would it take to score a billiard? 🤔 the maximum points you can get in a strike is 10. Lets over-estimate the speed you could play by saying you do a strike every second. - you would need 100 long billion seconds = 10^14 seconds = 3 million years. hmmmm 🤔

[@paulfaulkner6299]

@@JNCressey Does this explain why it wasn't me who won the Euromillions on Tuesday and how many years I'll need to buy a ticket for my turn to come up? (lol)

[@twest344]

Base twelve (or base 60, 12 *5) was very common in the ancient world. The year was thought to have 360 days (60 *6 or 12 *30), so therefore a circle is divided 360 degrees, also 24 hours in a day (12 hours sunlight, 12 hours dark on the equinox), 60 minutes to the hour, 60 seconds to the minute. Fractions were also well done in base 60, as "one-third" is much better as "20/60" than our modern "0.33333". Ancient numbering systems can be really fun, just like language.

[@LoneEagle2061]

I support the reclamation of the milliard; but from a mathematical position. The old sequence was much more satisfying. A m(ono)illion (10^6), a bi_llion ((10^6)^2), a tri_llion ((10^6)^3)… and so on.

[@Kokurorokuko]

I disagree. Yes, it's pretty nice mathematically speaking but you would need to alterate between -ard and -ion suffixes. Million - Billion - Trillion progression is just much more understandable for everyday speech.

[@Bakismannen_sweden]

Trust me. As someone who has the million/milliard in my language. Its not hard at all to understand.

[@davidsturm7706]

Nah, we prefer 1000(1000)ⁿ. 1000(1000)⁰ "zerillion" thousand 1000(1000)¹ m-illion 1000(1000)² b-illion 1000(1000)³ tr-illion etc.

[@wiktorchojnacki9746]

@LoneEagle2061, please check out the @David Sturm reply, its just as logical. And @Bakismannen - trust me, as someone who has the million/milliard in my language, it's really hard to speak to the english speaking world

[@MessiVsRonaldofan19]

I’d love a video going through the different terms that refer to time periods! We use these worlds fairly regularly but I’ve never thought about where they came form such as: second, minute, hour, day, week, fortnight, month( I have a feeling it had to do with the moon), year, lustrum, decade, century, millennium and any others I may have missed!!

[@sidarthur8706]

fortnight is fourteen nights. i don't know about the others tho. i've always assumed that minutes and seconds in the context of time must have come from divisions of a degree but that's probably wrong

[@hectorosbert]

@@sidarthur8706 I seem to recall the word 'second' in relation to the time unit comes from it being the second division of the hour, the first division being 'minute'.

[@SpringStarFangirl]

In Hebrew, the word for month- chodesh- comes from the word for new, "chadash", because the month begins on the night of the new moon.

[@RobertoTifi]

I'm Italian and I like your videos soooo much! In part because you look just a little bit like Marc Almond, whose music I appreciate a lot, but mostly because you explain interesting stuff so clearly! I worked for 15 years as IT teacher in an international school, and my colleagues are British, Americans, and Australians, so i get crazy with their different accents and with their funny divergent ways of naming big numbers! Luckily we seldom need in REAL life a miliardo/milliard/billion "things", but if we were scientists we'd be in trouble! Thanks again for your useful videos!

[@bhavers]

Thank you for videos. i find them interesting and informative. I have 2 suggestions for future videos. The first one is the misuse of the word "myself" as in "Bob, Joe and myself went to the pub". The second has to do with the pronunciation of the article "the" in front of a word that begin with a vowel as in "thu apple or thee apple".

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

12 being the upper limit of counting is still somewhat present in modern day German and English with the words Dutzend/dozen (12) and Gros/gross (100) and Maß/measure (1000). Although keep in mind that 100 in base-12 is really 144 in base-10 and 1000 is 1728. Base-12 (and therefore also base-60) is also the basis fur much of mathematical history before the French revolution because it makes dividing quantities and numbers into common fractions, like 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 2/3 and 3/4 clean numbers. You can also count to 12 with one hand, our days are divided into two times twelve hours, words like ounce, from lation uncia meaning one twelveth. Base-60 can be found in angles, hinting at the old Sumerians and their astronomy.

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

@tacfoley Which are the same numbers, as 100_base12 is 144_base10.

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@Ruhrpottpatriot Base 6 is better.

[@ianprince1698]

screws for woodwork the retailer used to open a gross box that had 144 in it and get out the half dozen you wanted

[@Ruhrpottpatriot]

@@Anonymous-df8it Base 6 isn't better. You can't count it cleanly with your hands like base 5, base 10 or base 12, common divisors like 1/4 are not even numbers, and for the rest it's like base 12 or base 60.

[@Anonymous-df8it]

@@Ruhrpottpatriot 1/5=0.111111... Now tell me what 1/5 in base 12 is again? Same goes with 1/7. Base 6 can easily handle the first four primes, whereas base 12 has fifths and sevenths that are mathematically the worst they can be. Single digit quarters are not necessary as if you have single digit halves (even number base) and you can't be bothered to remember what a quarter is, it's trivial to derive (halving a half; halving is easy) Also, with the finger counting bit, if you used your left hand for ones and your right hand to count sixes (so that the person reading it can just read from left to right), you get a base 6 finger counting system!

[@Weissenschenkel]

The number of particles in the observable universe is smaller than 1 googolplex. Milliards, billiards, etc. make sense in mathematics. The channel Numberphile has a wonderful explanation about it. Fun fact: some tribes from the Amazon rainforest count only up to three (one, two, many) or sometimes up to five (one, two, three, four, many.) Despite the fact that they have 10 fingers and 10 toes like anybody else. I see "Hundred" written and sometimes I think about red dogs. Houndrot sounds funny too.

[@allenjenkins7947]

In parts of Papua-New Guinea and some of the surrounding islands, some of the more isolated peoples only have words for 1,2,3,4,5 and many. One of the more interesting explanations is that the human brain can only grasp up to 5 objects in a single glance. Any more than that and we have to count them.

[@XEinstein]

That number only includes protons, neutrons, neutrinos and electrons. It does not include photons, gluons, quarks, dark matter, etc, so the actual number of particles in the observable universe is bigger than 10^80

[@Weissenschenkel]

@@XEinstein science can't currently measure dark matter and therefore we can't count them in. Sabine Hossenfelder has a video explaining that - it's her area if expertise.

[@dasffs]

6:50 And *that* is another benefit to listening with captions on. Thank you for including that delightful tidbit. Edit: ah! it came up in the footage later. Even more fun to see!

[@chrismoule7242]

1:44 - ah - now I know where Tolkien got the "red" bit of his term "Eored" when describing the elements of the Rohirrim cavalry. 120 riders...

[@kait_superheroic]

Have you considered making a discord server for you fans? I feel like some really intriguing conversations could come from that. I can set one up for you and manage it if wanted. I imagine that lots of learning could come through that.

[@xof-woodworkinghobbyist]

Hello Rob, I just discovered your channel and I love it. As ESL (originally from France, now living in Canada), your tips, backed with history, are just a blessing! Thank you! One thing I always wonder, and maybe you could me a video about it, is why the pronoun "I" is always a capital letter...

[@voxveritas333]

maybe because i by itself looks so small and lonely. 🙂

[@Zachyshows]

I thought it would refer to a name, but then You, They, She and He should all be capitalised too. I have no idea why :\

[@vextenoch]

Actually we at the university were taught that thousand actually is connected to French douze cent witch means twelve hundred or 1200. Thats why german and english use dozen or duzent for 12.

[@12tanuha21]

Similarity between thousand and douze cent is with big chance from the PiE root of the word

[@chsinger96]

"Permille" is actually quite commonly used in German (Promille), especially when talking about blood alcohol contents. We don't pass out at 0.3%, we pass out at 3 PROMILLE🥴🍻 In fact, it has become such a defined word that it almost can't be used in a serious context anymore lol

[@mabs503]

Precisely the same in Sweden. Promille is almost always referring to alcohol level in your blood, tested via your breath, and mostly when talking about limits for driving.

[@kris7822]

Exact same thing in Polish, as well.

[@chsinger96]

@@kris7822 except you guys can probably take an average of 5 Permille before passing out😂💪🏼

[@BrightonandHoveActually]

In the UK, insurance cover is rated per mille - the premium per £1,000 potential payout. "‰" can be typed on a computer by holding down the Alt key, typing "0137" on the numeric keypad and releasing the Alt key.

[@PUARockstar]

Same in Ukrane

[@andrewrobinson2565]

I remember the British billion from primary school in the 60s. Love it ❤️😊.

[@tewennow]

The 'long hundred' was used up until the middle of the last century in West Cornwall by fisherman when counting up the number of herring caught. The 'hundred' was, as you say, 120, and they counted the fish by taking three in each hand, twenty times to give 120. They would also refer to a small number where appropriate as a 'half hundred'. They also had a name for a large number of around 10,000, which was called a 'lass' ot 'last'.

[@johndododoe1411]

Interestingly, some languages emphasize score based counting, calling 60 3-score, 87 as 4 score and 7. Seeing the long hundred in this video made me think it was 6-score, not 10-dozen.

[@tewennow]

@@johndododoe1411 In traditional Cornish, score was used in counting, just as you exemplify above. In fact, even when English was taking over from Cornish as the main language and in my boyhood days, I can remember the farmers referring to pigs as 'so many score' in weight.

[@timflatus]

@@tewennow Yep, Cornish uses vigesimal counting similar to French - ugens (20), dew-ugens (40), tri-ugens (60), peswar-ugens (80) as I'm sure you're aware, just pointing it out in case there is anyone here who doesn't know any Cornish ;)

[@ferretyluv]

@@johndododoe1411 It’s called a vigesimal system and it’s quite common. French and Celtic languages use it. There’s also sexagesimal (base 60) which we still use today when talking about trigonometry, telling time, and dates (360 degrees in a circle, 60 minutes in an hour, 360 days in a lunar year) because the Babylonians used sexagesimal counting. They used it for the same reason as base-12: really easy to divide it. 12 goes into 60!

[@sazji]

Fascinating video, thank you! I speak Greek (as my second language) but had never really considered what a “myrio” was, even though the connection with “myriad” and “mille” seems obvious enough. (R/L replacement even happens within Greek dialects today). It’s not in current use as an independent word for 10,000; they just say “deka xiliades / δέκα χιλιάδες” (ten thousands). But it does appear in the word for “million”: (h)ekatommyrio / εκατομμύριο, a compound of “(h)ekaton + myrios” which translates as “a group of ten 10,000s.” And sure enough, 10 x 10,000 does indeed equal a million. This is something that kids educated in Greece probably all know, (Έλληνες, το μάθατε;) but which I never really thought to ask myself. :-)

[@eyeofthasky]

myrias/myriadis and mille have NO connection, so nothing about r/l replacement. myrias is a 'invented' noun from the adjective myrios which means "numberless/countless" (and was pronounced murios 1kBC btw, just because u nowadays pronounce Y's as I's does not imply it means anything), while mille does not only mean khilioi but also comes from the same root word (+ prefixed "one" like in _semel_ "one times"): sim+khili > smi-khli > smihli > (s)milli > mille

[@sebastianjoseph2828]

When the metric system was being formulated myria- was almost added as a prefix, similar to kilo-, centi-, etc. A myriameter would be 10,000 m.

[@gergelyagocs]

it was widely used in local metric systems but was not included in the SI. Myriameter was for example used in Germany extensively.

[@SchemeTintFocus]

I would like to see a highway sign in Megameters, to the outer planets

[@Zachyshows]

388.6Mm to The Moon ^

[@rfvtgbzhn]

5:06 sure? For example in the Battle of Hastings the Anglo-Saxon strength is estimated as between 5,000 and 13,000 according to Wikipedia and I am also quite sure that the accounting of the royal courts of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms also needed numbers of at least 4 digits.

[@mrmosk2011]

In Chinese, number names goes up to 10,000, which is Wang 万. So the natural way is counting by 4 zeros, not 3 as in English. I agree, the American billion is shortsighted, because it makes naming larger numbers harder. Googol is just funny on its own.

[@zetectic7968]

Hi Rob, thanks for these numerous facts 😀 A pity you bypassed the Hundredweight aka 112lbs or 8 stones. I guess you could do a video on the weighty subject. BTW while I was watching another YT video I discovered that you moonlight as a presenter/newsreader on DW 😄That explains Berlin and your fluent German.

[@crazytiger6]

I speak Brazilian Portuguese and the word for a billion is “bilhão” which is similar to what English uses today, however the word for thousand is “mil” which was slightly confusing when first learning the language as “mil” and “milhão” (the word for million) are very easy to confuse when learning a new language

[@andreasrehn7454]

the word million is just an augmentative (kind of the opposite of a Diminutive ) of mille... like in tromba - trombone, viola - violon, melo - melone (literally great apple), calza - calzone (lit. great sock) there are tons of these in Italian. Many exist in diminutive and augemtnative.. as trompetta, tomba, trombone, or violine, viola, violon (cello)

[@jdos2]

I'm learning EP and "mil" is a tough thing to learn, indeed! It's one of those false-friend sounds that isn't yet automatic- I have to think "três mil isn't three million..." every time I hear it. Same with "antes" ("before before before before"). Practice, I'm sure.

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

@@andreasrehn7454 violoncello is a small violone, violone being the biggest member of a different family of viole.

[@raymasraymas]

I really appreciate you including lakhs (used to be spelt lacs) and crores as they are used more commonly than a hundred thousand, millions and billions even by speakers of English as a first language. In India, although not it Pakistan, the words are also recognised by the banking system where it is expected to write a cheque or demand draft in lakhs (and crores if you’ve got that much).

[@Dancestar1981]

Actually English speakers never heard of them

[@raymasraymas]

@@Dancestar1981 Mate, that’s a very narrow definition of “English speakers”! On the subcontinent of the 1.4 billion at least 300 million speak English as their first language. Those words are widely used there with dictionary entries, including the Oxford English Dictionary.

[@donryland3208]

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that Germany and France counted large numbers differently. I don't remember the details, but I remember something about the UK using one of them in English, while the US used another one. Where 1,000 million was used outside of the US, we used 1 billion in the US. In the US, we like to count a 1 followed by a multiple of 3 zeroes as a unit: 1,000 (1 thousand), 1,000,000 (1 million), 1,000,000,000 (1 billion), 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion). etc. Counting in Japanese however, is units of 4 zeroes. So, 10,000 is counted as ichiman (1 man = one 10,000), and 100 million is counted as ichioku (1 oku = one 100,000,000). So, the Japanese word for 100,000 is actually ten 10,000s, the word for 1,000,000 is actually one hundred 10,000s. And, the word for 1,000,000,000 (1 billion in the US), is ten 100,000,000s.

[@llywyllngryffyn8053]

OK Rob, This suggestion is one I have always had an interest ing: Group Words. A Murder of Crows, a Herd of Cattle, a Flock of Geese etc. There is an entire 'science' or area of study to that, but the words interest me and I thought it might for you, as well.

[@heathertruskinger6214]

Being an Aussie....I grew up with a billion being 1,000,000,000,000..... as an adult, I thought the Americans with their "shorter" version were silly.😂 But.... like everyone else, I have given up, and use the smaller American version 🤣

[@stephenlee5929]

Brit here, same. Also should there be a long thousand (1,200)?

[@heathertruskinger6214]

@@stephenlee5929 probably.....it's just like eggs I guess, they tend to be sold in dozens ( in Australia anyway) or bread rolls ( half dozen, or dozen...and sometimes the Baker's dozen-13 ), and yet my week old fridge only has a tray for 7 eggs ....go figure ?🤣

[@Jonski2009]

This Kiwi experienced the same thing, and concurs with your opinion of creeping American linguistic imperialism.

[@zagrizena]

@@heathertruskinger6214 maybe you're supposed to only buy half dozen when you have a single egg left? Or the designers were a bit lazy and just turned out a tray with the number of holes that fit with their tray dimensions rather than designig around more commonly used numbers. Just thinking out loud 🙊

[@Svensk7119]

@@heathertruskinger6214 Dozen eggs here too in USA. I will have to use lakh and crore. Mr. Rob didn't mention score, though I hoped.

[@mrrandom1265]

I'd like to see a video about words that exist in other languages but that are just a mix of two words in English. For example: peacock, butterfly, cupboard. That'd be very interesting to know if there once was a proper noun for those things in old English.

[@beageler]

I don't know, I have no expertise in linguistics, but I would doubt that. One other big language of the germanic family, german, is known for it's compound words. I wouldn't think there never were alternative words, but I wouldn't think it the rule.

[@forrest_lump]

10 to the power of 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21: Million Milliarde Billion Billiarde Trillion Trilliarde Do you recognize the consistency? That's what we have in Germany. It's also easy to learn in school. 🇩🇪 Funny when you translate it to English: Million billion trillion quadrillion trillion trillion.

[@korobkofff]

7:20 - This is so weird, from the very beginning of the video I had a feeling that this is the English Garden in Munich. Very similar view. It appeared to be Berlin, but still Germany! I miss Deutschland so much. It looks and feels so special! And of course thanks for amazing videos!

[@annieoakley3516]

I wonder if you could make a clip explaining names that are pronounced completely differently from how they're written? Cholmondely, Gloucester, Worcester and Featherstonehaugh come to mind as a few examples. Thank you and keep those fascinating videos coming!

[@knucker4931]

An excellent film, thank you. I'm with you on the idea to reintroduce the milliard and bin the short billion. Perhaps a film about the 'ie' v 'ei' thing we have. Which as every scientist will tell you, the i before e except after c rule in English is rubbish. Best wishes Al

[@wbakeriii]

...or when sounding like "A" as in "neighbor" and "weigh", or when sounding like "I" as in "Eiffel" or "stein", or when...

[@bigaspidistra]

Harold Wilson fixed the official usage of billion as a thousand million in 1974 to fit in with "international" practice and the usage of milliard fell off a cliff after that. Americans took the short billion from French practice of the time.

[@rosiefay7283]

It was a shame that we had to adopt American practice rather than them adopting ours. "Billion" contains the element "bi" indicating 2, but that doesn't help to indicate the meaning of 10^9.

[@glen1555]

Beat me to it.

[@simonmeeds1886]

@@rosiefay7283 I agree: the two-ness in 1,000,000 ^ 2 makes absolute sense.

[@davidjames4915]

@@rosiefay7283 Yes it does: a thousand multiplied by a thousand *twice*. There's your 2. A trillion is a thousand multiplied by a thousand thrice. And so on. It matches the pattern in how large numbers are written, in blocks of 3 zeros or thousands, not in millions or blocks of 6 zeros. 1,000,000 not 1,000000 1,000,000,000 not 1000,000000 The American pattern, ironically, also matches the pattern used for ordering prefixes in the Metric system. Btw, the old pattern went as follows in increasing magnitude: Thousand Million Milliard Billion Billiard Trillion Trilliard etc I rather doubt most people would actually regard that as particularly logical because instead of just having to remember to increment the prefix for each expansion of a thousand, instead you have to remember to increment the prefix for each expansion of a million but also to switch the suffix for an intervening expansion of a thousand.

[@rogeratygc7895]

@@rosiefay7283 Quite right. But bi-(mi)llion meaning a million times a million does make sense.

[@maxximumb]

I'm still unreasonably annoyed by our adoption of the short billion.

[@neiliusflavius]

Not unreasonable at all.

[@jauneetbrun]

I think that Brits and Americans should use the milliard, billiard etc., bringing more harmony between languages.

[@djtwo2]

@@jauneetbrun But Americans won't agree to that, because Americans are "special", in every sense of the word.

[@TerryBollinger]

I'm one of those cheerfully special Americans, and I hereby do freely confess to feeling a profound sense of peace and joy when, as I grew older, I could finally read a piece of scientific literature and not have to spend minutes trying to figure out whether some large number in the text meant what every _other_ English-speaking scientist in the world meant, or instead was an, um... _special_ use of the word.

[@rogeratygc7895]

@@djtwo2 Like children with "special needs"... ?

[@PhilipCrichton]

Being an American I do see the merit of the British naming of Billion being used for one million million, a Trillion being one billion billion, etc. in a geometric sequence. That naming convention will give a good way to describe very large numbers. As a mathematician by training I find a beauty in the structure. However, people rarely need to speak of such large numbers. Even mathematicians needed a word to describe a ridiculously large number (Googol). But by the British method a Googol is merely Ten Thousand Quintilian. Hardly useful for balancing your accounts. The American method of a new name for each new thousand in a linear sequence offers names for numbers people encounter more frequently and easier to mentally grasp.

[@Yngvarfo]

When I was a Norwegian kid learning English at school in the seventies, I was taught that billion had different meanings in British and American English, as you said, but I believe that the Norwegian curriculum was late in catching on that the Brits had changed it. I first became fully aware of the change when I read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was British, but clearly used the word "billion" when talking about the population of the Earth. The word "permille" is alive and well in Norway as "promille", but it is specifically used when talking about the amount of alcohol in the blood when people are suspected of driving under the influence. To the degree that we usually simply say "kjøre med promille" or "driving with permille" to refer to being over the legal limit of 0.2‰ (used to be 0.5‰).

[@Dranok1]

Ah yes, but remember that the old "long number system" is recalled in tHHGttG by reference to the Milliard Gargantu-Brain :-)

[@derbazi257]

Great video once again and I gotta say you should have kept that hat 😆. The only thing I would love to know is why the Americans started using billion when they were talking about a milliard because mathematically the "rest of the world way" is so much more logical. A million is 10^6 A billion is 10^12 (6 twice hence bi) A trillion is 10^18 (6 thrice hence tri) And so on and so forth...

[@paulwilliamdixon3674]

Usonians (I don't use the term American, as America extends well beyond the US) have another strange custom which is putting month-day-year rather than day-month-year as in the rest of the world. Why? And why is it the 'World' Series with US teams only?

[@rmdodsonbills]

Well, it's a different logic. The first three places are ones, tens, hundreds. The next three are ones, tens, and hundreds of thousands. The next three are ones, tens, hundreds of millions. It's just as logical to continue to reset with a new -illion every three places as it is to alternate between -illions and -illiards. And easier, too, I'd argue.

[@rogeratygc7895]

I always assumed they were just given to exaggeration ;)

[@thomaswilliams2273]

@@paulwilliamdixon3674 Dates are written the way they are spoken, so we would say August 1st instead of 1 August or the 1st of August for example. As for the World Series Canada still has a MLB team, so it's not just the US, but admittedly it's not the whole world.

[@JohnJohn-hd1pc]

"miliard" is one billion in Romanian also. How about a follow-up for decreasingly small numbers, ie fractions? And "decimate" - so many reporters seem to use it as 'nearly all destroyed'. Since my schooldays I have always thought it meant one in ten or 10% (destroyed). I refuse to Google it, even once, let alone a googol times! Many thanks for your fun and informative videos. They are excellently produced as well!

[@rosiefay7283]

The problem I see with "decimate" isn't that people don't know the etymology of an obscure word; rather, it's that they use the term at all in this metaphorical sense, but it's an unsuitable metaphor.

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

@@rosiefay7283 "Decimate" originally refers to group punishment of a Roman legion (mostly for cowardice), where in each group of ten one would be chosen at random and the others would have to kill him! "Decimate" should mean "a large part destroyed" while "holocaust" means "nearly all destroyed."

[@paulwilliamdixon3674]

In Portuguese we have dizimar which means to wipe out or nearly destroy, but also to (give a) tithe. Dízimo is the word for tithe (as in a church), which is usually set at 10%.

[@johnridout6540]

"one in ten" is the etymology, but not the current common usage.

[@voxveritas333]

I read that in Roman times, punishment in their army was to decimate them, i.e. every 10th man was picked out and beaten to death by his comrades. Really harsh! Decimate nowadays is not so bad as back then.

[@dengamleidiot]

1:22 “hund” is “dog” in danish

[@Barrinetic]

it is hind in english so

[@miniimaelstrom]

From 3:59 - 4:08, as you're talking about the reason behind 11 and 12 not being 'teen' numbers, the captions are entirely missing. I watch youtube with captions on a lot, and I noticed; figured it wouldn't hurt to say somethign, since that seems like something that was just accidentally missed in production. :D (ETA, the captions for 7:20 - 7:41 have been misplaced at 6:51 - 6:57 instead. (accidentally deleted this part before commenting, sorry!))

[@jbejaran]

Even as an American, I could get behind the idea of going back to calling a contemporary billion a "milliard", a contemporary trillion a "billion", a contemporary quadrillion a "billiard", and a contemporary quintillion a "trillion", etc. However, we'd need a critical mass of English speakers the world over, including those of us in the U.S. and Canada to start speaking that way before I'd switch. I'm afraid that's simply not the kind of thing one could just decree.

[@paulfaulkner6299]

What a great idea - America's national debt is only a fraction of a googolplex, _sorry, I meant googolplexplex..._ (lol)

[@timsmith2525]

I find the current system aesthetically pleasing. A million is a (thousand) thousands. A billion (bi = 2) is a (thousand, thousand) thousands. A trillion (tri = 3) is a (thousand, thousand, thousand) thousands. An octillion (oct = 8) is a (thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand) thousands. Et cetera, until you make yourself sick.

[@yllbardh]

@@timsmith2525 you know that there's a million and a milliard, a billion and a billiard, a trillion and a trilliard etc. etc. A trilliard f.x. is a thousand million million millions (A billion trillion): 1 followed by twenty-one zeros, 10^21.

[@timsmith2525]

@@yllbardh Yes, I do.

[@nHans]

Since we're talking numbers, how about *_we get rid of all the large numbers_* mentioned in this video? Including our *_decimal numbering system_* itself? No, I'm not saying we go back to using Roman Numerals (ugh!) or other equally cumbersome and archaic systems. Actually, I'm advocating for the *_base twelve_* aka *_dozenal_* (from "dozen", meaning twelve) numbering system. Don't worry, we keep the zero and the positional numbering. Both were invented by my ancestors-ancient Hindus-and I'm justifiably proud of them. But even though they invented the decimal system too, I have no hesitation in admitting that the dozenal system is objectively and demonstrably superior. And we're all familiar with it-the number _dozen_ itself along with _gross,_ hours on an analog clock, months in a year, finger segments on each human hand, inches in a foot, troy ounces in a troy pound ... right? What was that-what did you say? This isn't the forum for discussing visions of the future? You want to go back to arguing whether _one billion_ should be 10^9 or 10^12? Oh come on now!

[@Nikioko]

The “long hundred” is actually a gros, which is a dozen dozens, 12² = 144. And Eleventy for 110 and Twelfty for 120 was used by Tolkien as well, when it comes to hobbit ages. In French, it goes up to 16 (seize) before the “teens” (17 = dix-sept). Likewise, in French, there are no “ties” after 60: 70 = "sixty-ten”, 80 = "four twenties”, 90 = "four twenties-ten”.

[@bungaIowbill]

A wikipedia search seems to agree that a long hundred is 120. It also notes that 120 equals a small gross, whereas the normal gross is, as you say, 144.

[@R4iko]

And to expend on twenty, it seems to come from "two-ten"...which means that when you say 90 in french, you're basically saying four (two-ten) ten...

[@banana9494]

A gross is actually 144. A long dozen however is 120. At least according to information online. Tolkien must have made a mistake.

[@bungaIowbill]

@@banana9494 I think you'll find that a long dozen is 13

[@banana9494]

@@bungaIowbill sorry i mean't long hundred

[@freaXtyle]

Awesome content! Talking of Milliard I thought youll mention "Long scale" for huge numbers where after every -ion goes its -ard. Instead of short scale we commonly use nowdays

[@WindowsDrawer]

7:10 In Polish, permille (or promil) is commonly used, especially when talking about the amount of alcohol in the blood of someone

[@arelendil7]

In Spanish there is also “millar”, “billón”, and “trillón”, which mean the same as in Italian and French. There is a bit of confusion when we listen to talk about the age of the Universe in English and we do not know that billion is a quite smaller number than “billón”.

[@UltimateHammerBro]

"Millar" means one thousand. The proper word in Spanish for a milliard is "millardo".

[@itsgiag]

Te lo digo así de fácil, «billón» ≠ «billion», «mil millón/millardo» = «billion». «Trillón» ≠ «trillion», «trillón» = «billion», así sucesivamente.

[@rogerdines6244]

As an English English speaker, I still really think of a billion as a million million, which my father insisted upon, though, force majeure, I now have to call what is properly a milliard, a billion-milliard is so much more elegant, and its essential excision a grave loss to the language.

[@paulfaulkner6299]

I agree: To me a _billion_ is a _million million_ (ie 1,000,000,000,000) and NOT a _thousand million_ (as otherwise improperly defined by the Americans who in turn then erroneously call what we call a billion a trillion!). I too think that the word _milliard_ is not only elegant but allows proper scope for us in the UK to be able to describe our gas bills properly if the rate of inflation continues as it has unabated for the next so many years!

[@Lily-Bravo]

I remember feeling the depression of defeat when I realised we British had conceded to the USA about the use of the word billion.

[@netsplit64]

Ever since I learned what decimate means, I've been really annoyed by the modern usage meaning to annihilate or near annihilate, instead of reducing by a 10th. For example simmering a sauce until it's decimated to thicken it up would likely cause a kitchen fire in the modern meaning. Really enjoying your channel by the way! Discovered it recently and binge watched everything.

[@kerendn]

The Spanish conquistadors decimated the Native American population due to exposure to disease brought over from Europe. Literally reduced the population to a tenth of its size. I've never heard or read the word decimate used when referring to reducing a sauce. Annihilate comes from nil, turn to nothing, which is not the same as decimate.

[@netsplit64]

@@kerendn "Obsolete. to take a tenth of or from." unfortunately a comment with a dictionary link keeps getting disappeared by youtube. You'll have to check yourself. The word comes from Latin, and an infamous punishment for Roman Legions was to be decimated, 1/10th of the legion was executed. Decimating a sauce is an unusual usage, but the usage is correct by it's original meaning.

[@pwblackmore]

I do agree with you. Perhaps it's reporters (who should know their language) that changed it. I've read 'celebrants' (those that partake of Mass, in actual fact) being used instead of 'celebrators', or 'careen' (meaning to lay a ship on it's side to clean the hull) instead of the correct 'career', as in "The car careened around the corner". Turning the car on it's side to scrape the barnacles off isn't a normal procedure. Both words seem to have been misused from the 20's by reporters

[@netsplit64]

@@pwblackmore a car on it's side to scrape off barnacles is a much different image! Thanks for those. They're great!

[@timwade2767]

Your mention of the grandeur of the number 100 to a small child reminds me of one morning in my early childhood when I was suspected of being sick, so my mother wanted to take my temperature. I emphatically did _not_ want to be sick because there was a school picnic that day. I grumpily told her, "I'll stay home if my temperature is more than a hundred", certain that I had stated an impossibly large number. I had never been so unsettled to have my mother _agree_ with me. My temperature was more than 100. I stayed home.

[@RobWords]

That's exactly the sort of thing I was talking about!

[@kaasmeester5903]

I propose: "imperial hundred" vs "metric hundred". Just ran into this channel at random, and as a lover of language and etymology in particular, liked & subscribed :)

[@macbuff81]

In German, one million is "eine Millionen," while one billion is "eine Milliarde." I always found that interesting:) Also, about 15 years ago, a case of eggs at the grocery store usually consisted of a dozen ("ein Dutzend") eggs. Since then it's been changed to ten eggs to bring it in line with the metric system

[@jmitterii2]

Here in the USA eggs are sold as a dozen still. Or 2 dozen or 24 eggs. Or half a dozen 6 eggs. There is also a "baker's dozen" which just adds an extra unit... comes from 16th century bread makers would deliver 13 loafs of bread to the retailer, the 13th loaf ensuring profit for the retailer, while the 12 loaves were the whole sale break even cost. Another continued use of the bakers dozen ranged from a kind of "buy 12 get 1 free" sort of gimmick... an extra tasting sample or display sample. A baker's dozen is still used today, just not that frequently. So sometimes when you order donuts or other baked goods, they'll come in 13 baked goods yet be called a dozen... a baker's dozen.

[@JSarmat86]

@@jmitterii2 in russian 13 is called "a devil's dozen". I was fascinated when i found that the word "dozen" comes from french "douzaine", which comes from "douze" = 12.

[@sandra.helianthus]

Yes, in German we have Million, Milliarde, Billion, Billiarde, Trillion, Trilliarde ... . ... and we still buy "half a dozen" eggs if the 10pack is too big (or not bio ☺️ ). But I am seriously not sure if kids still know today what a dozen or half a dozen means. It is more used today in sayings like "oh man, there are half a dozen dogs running freely" giving it a negativ connotation of "a lot", funnily making half-a-dozen (!) dogs sound more than a dozen 🐕 😂

[@RSProduxx]

@@sandra.helianthus some do... I tought them :)

[@sandra.helianthus]

@@RSProduxx 👍🌻

[@DareMurdok]

Hi Rob! I just discovered your channel! You have such a fun and nice energy and I've been binging your content today. Here's a few things I'm curious about and would like to see you make episodes of - The evolution of Etiquette and Title words like Sir (and the insult version sirrah) , Madam (and when it became Ma'am) and where did the Titles like Count/Countess/Viscount, Lord/Lady, Baron/Baroness, etc. come from and what they mean. - Medical terms with all its different prefixes and suffixes like -itis and -osis , and the evolution of words and terms for various conditions, anatomy, and diseases. - Names of dinosaurs and their meanings and naming conventions! - Words about quality - like good , great, awesome, awful, terrible, (and why is awesome good and awful bad) :)

[@clydecessna737]

Sir, I love your show. You keep referencing "old English" but that was just the other day. Pre-English roots should always be included in you explanations; Norwegians also say "tusen" (as in tusen takk), so there must be more to a thousand than the glorious imprecise phrase "old English". On another subject: please do a video on Arabic words in the English language.

[@aromaticsnail]

10:00 That applies mostly to American/British English only and maybe some countries overly influenced by them. Many more countries use the Large Scale in comparison to the Small Scale in use by the Americans and British. So 1 billion is 1 million million

[@Eddi.M.]

Nice one again! Is there any particular reason why you left out German when it comes to milliard? I personally do not care for how the English speaking world is calling a THOUSAND millions. I know how they do it and recalculate in my head. If they insist on paying a million millions instead of a thousand, it is fine with me.

[@HenryLoenwind]

No need to mention German in a video about language---it will be mentioned in the comments anyway. ;)

[@Eddi.M.]

@@HenryLoenwind And you resent that? Well, don't. You see, even in the 1830s or 1840s the more educated Brits learned German after French (cf "Jane Eyre" or "Agnes Grey"), today nobody expects that and if someone speaks it, it comes as a welcome surprise. At least I fully understand that the realities of Britain today are such that you guys completely throw yourselves on Urdu/Hindi, Pashtu or Farsi. And why should you not?

[@trueriver1950]

@@Eddi.M. you're out of date. Ukrainian!

[@Eddi.M.]

@@trueriver1950 in Britain, too? I wasn't sure about Polish and left it out.

[@trueriver1950]

@@Eddi.M. to be honest, more UA flags in the UK than folk learning the language but strong support. We have Ukrainian language signs on our tram system in Manchester welcoming recent arrivals from Ukraine

[@dotancohen]

When I learned the word Myriad, it was explained to me that it refers to not 10,000 arbitrary items, but rather 100 different types of items, 100 of each type. So it refers not only to a large quantity, but also to diversity.