Numbers Fight Over Points and Commas
When I first arrived in Japan, I was tricked by street markets and stalls who wrote their prices using the Japanese characters for numbers - and more than once I bought something that was more expensive than I’d hoped by confusing the kanji for seven and nine.
I thought in Europe, things would be easier. But I was in for another surprise, one that I was chatting with my students about earlier today. It took me nearly 30 years to discover that not everybody uses “.” for a decimal point.
Yep, imagine my surprise when I discovered that if something costs nearly two Euros in many parts of Europe, it’ll be marked 1,99. But wait, it gets worse: big numbers can be clarified by using what I think is a decimal point, so a million can be written 1.000.000. The same applies in South America where the Spanish and Portuguese speakers use a similar system.
If this is a suprise to you too, the good news is that most of the time the context reminds you of what the number really is. If we’re talking about the population of a country and it’s written as 5.000.000, it’s pretty clear we’re talking millions. Similarly, a price per kilo label for oranges that says 4,32 is obviously 4 Euros and 32 cents. If you’re measuring a room, though, and it’s 4,326 metres long, you might do a double-take when you see that on a plan.
Whoever I speak to, they always argue the point (no pun intended) that their version of using points or commas is the most logical. It’s another case of nobody’s right: it’s just how you were brought up. Well, that’s my $0.02 worth anyway. Or is that my $0,02?
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