Thread: Pronouncing big numbers

Originally Posted by Jasper May

You can say 'fifteen hundred' in dates, but not in much else. Otherwise, at least in Britspeak, use "one thousand five hundred".

[edit:] This is bollocks. You can also say 'there were fifteen hundred casualties' or 'fifteen hundred pianolas'. Gah, I don't know.

Yep, you can say fifteen hundred and so on whenever you want. Although I hate it when people say that(unless they're referring to a date). I always say one thousand five hundred.

From my side I'm not sure how to pronounce it in Russian. Probably so: “Тысяча триста семьдесят пять целых, шестьсот семьдесят семь тысяч пятьсот шестьдесят семь миллионных.” Right?

I always hated Russian decimals. What do Russian scientists say when they need to express a long decimal number? Do they really sit there and think about how many миллионых it is? Or is there a better way?

I also find it difficult to believe that Russian scientists would talk like that .. perhaps they use the same idea as Anglophone scientists? For example:

0.0004563 would be: "Four point five six three times ten to the minus four" ?
I guess they must find some easy way ..

Originally Posted by waxwing

I also find it difficult to believe that Russian scientists would talk like that .. perhaps they use the same idea as Anglophone scientists? For example:

0.0004563 would be: "Four point five six three times ten to the minus four" ?
I guess they must find some easy way ..

"Четыре целых пятьсот шестьдесят три тысячных на десять в минус четвёртой". There is no easy way

Originally Posted by waxwing

0.0004563 would be: "Four point five six three times ten to the minus four" ?
I guess they must find some easy way ..

That's how I usually say it (0.0004563):

ноль, запятая (it's comma in russian decimal numbers), три ноля, четыре, пять, шесть, три, всего семь знаков после запятой.

But in some official or just important presentations I would say:

Ноль целых четыре тысячи пятьсот шестьдесят три десятимилионных (having it written before )

Originally Posted by al

"Четыре целых пятьсот шестьдесят три тысячных на десять в минус четвёртой". There is no easy way

One more formal way rather friquently used.

Anybody who often deals with long fractions in any language that I know of ends up pronouncing the digits separately. It may be considered informal by the purists, but it is a de-facto standard among those who actually talk about numbers. The same is often true of the integer part when it gets out of hand.

One Russian feature is partitioning the long number into triples, which are easily pronounced as standalone numbers thanks to the compactness of "сто" and its derivatives.

So: 1375.677567 = тысяча ("тыща") триста семьдесят ("семисят") пять - запятая/точка - шестьсот ("шесот") семьдесят ("семисят") семь - пятьсот ("пе(и)цот") шестьдесят ("шесят") семь. The words in parentheses are the reduced numerals, the way they're pronounced in rapid speech.