Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5677 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish
| Message 1 of 6 05 March 2010 at 8:48am | IP Logged |
I'm hoping someone can clarify something for me. I'm reading a German website and am
having a little trouble with understanding some numbers.
Am I correct to assume the following:
$17.500 (German) = $17,500 (English)
$176,36 (German) = $176.36 (English)
Thanks.
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Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 2 of 6 05 March 2010 at 9:01am | IP Logged |
Indeed. German uses . to separate thousands and millions and , to separate fractions.
€ 16.346.388.359,68
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 3 of 6 05 March 2010 at 6:37pm | IP Logged |
I think the only reasonable meaning of a number ending with a two-digit group would be a fraction, and a three-digit group quite a large number (larger than one thousand). I mean, nobody would mistake thinking that $17,500 is seventeen dollars and five-hundred... "millidollars"... In Sweden it's customary to insert spaces between each three-digit group, and comma before fractions, e.g. 1 609 000 (one million six-hundred and nine thousand), 2,5 hours (two and a half hours).
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Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 4 of 6 05 March 2010 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
Yeah, inserting spaces is an alternative in Germany, but dots are much more common.
I would be careful not to assume too much by the amount of grouped digits though, because
e. g. Mandarin creates groups of four for high numbers, in keeping with their counting
system which is based on ten thousands rather than thousands.
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MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5809 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German
| Message 5 of 6 05 March 2010 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
Sprachprofi wrote:
Yeah, inserting spaces is an alternative in Germany, but dots are much more common.
I would be careful not to assume too much by the amount of grouped digits though, because
e. g. Mandarin creates groups of four for high numbers, in keeping with their counting
system which is based on ten thousands rather than thousands. |
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Indian languages use groups of two digits, after the first three (like 1,00,00,000 which is called “a crore”).
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Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5422 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 6 of 6 06 March 2010 at 7:35am | IP Logged |
Sprachprofi wrote:
Indeed. German uses . to separate thousands and millions and , to separate fractions.
€ 16.346.388.359,68 |
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Spanish (at least the Latin American variety) does the same, and it's so weird to get used to. But if it has two digits after the , its obviously a decimal.
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