RE: Number separators

From: Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com
Date: Mon Oct 30 2000 - 14:04:06 EST


Mike Ayers wrote:
> I discovered this weekend that Chinese, despite grouping large
> numbers by ten thousands [...], write their digits with comma
> separators every 3 digits [...]

This may be different in different operating systems, but I too was
convinced that they grouped four digits at a time.

> I am aware that there are European languages (swiss and
> italian?) that group four digits, and am reasonably sure
> that japanese does.

Check the date of your information: was it written on April 1st!?

I am 101% sure that this is not true for Italy, and 99% sure that it not
true even for Switzerland (so, on average, I'm 100% sure that it was an
April fool:-)

English, Italian, French and German share the same syntax for numbers >= 100
(i.e. we all use the units hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, etc.),
so that would be absurd.

> Before I go on a wild web search, does anyone know if
> there already
> exists a collection of information on the numbering systems of various
> languages, including the natural language ordering of the
> numbers, the digit
> grouping size, and the digit group separator character?
> Since this is for
> informational purposes, I don't need code, just examples.

IBM has a web pages to show the contents of their locale information; have
you checked that?

_ Marco



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