Billion and other large numbers

Solution 1:

Is this still the case or has the world aligned itself to the American way?

At least Britain seems to have largely aligned itself that way. Quoting Wikipedia, which has an excellent entry on the topic (Long and short scales):

[In the UK,] "billion" has meant 10⁹ in most sectors of official published writing for many years now. The UK government, the BBC, and most other broadcast or published mass media, have used the short scale in all contexts since the mid-1970s.

Before the widespread use of "billion" for 10⁹, UK usage generally referred to thousand million rather than milliard. The long scale term "milliard", for 10⁹, is obsolete in British English, though its derivative, "yard", is still used as slang in the London money, foreign exchange and bond markets.

I wouldn't say that the world has done so, however, as the list of long-scale countries is rather long. For example, in Finnish the only word we use for 10⁹ is miljardi, while 10¹² is biljoona.

But you could well say that about the English-speaking world which now almost universally uses "billion" for 10⁹, according to that Wikipedia article.

Solution 2:

Ha! you guys want confusion... try Japan. They work in units of 10000. Despite their close ties with America... they haven't gone all American.

• 百 = 100
• 千 = 1000
• 万 = 10000
• 億 = 1,0000,0000

And so on...

So, you end up with number like 5000万, which is 5000,0000 (or 50,000,000 how we'd write it)

It would be like saying:

• 1 hundred
• 1 thousand
• 1 ten-thousand
• 10 ten-thousand
• 100 ten-thousand
• 1000 ten-thousand
• 1 billion