Join in 7 seconds.. Existing users: sign in.

all forums, active | friendly talkzone, travel tips, visa & paperwork, renting, selling & meetups, politics & the war, espanol

Millions lost in translation

Here's something interesting. While I was discussing the price of a house here in California with a friend in Bogota I mentioned that this particular house was worth $900,000 U.S. dollars and roughly about (rounding the numbers) 1.8 billion pesos. He laughed and said: that's impossible how can it be 1.8 billion pesos? I said because it's 1 thousand, 8 hundred thousand. He laughed again and said one thousand million is not one billion. Needless to say the argument went back and forth until I discovered that in the U.S. recognizes one thousand million as one billion, but in Colombia one billion is actually one million times a million. So they don't consider Bill Gates a billionaire nor Carlos Slim, they're simply millionaires. This has to create confusion in biig-money dealings between Colombia and the U.S.

By mrgizmo on Jul 31, 2007, 08:21 in Friendly Talkzone.

Peter (Moderator) says on Jul 31, 2007, 08:36:

But it would make transferring billions of dollars easier to the UK. Or are those pounds. Wait. um...?

Poor but snappy

0 funny, 0 helpful.

BAQ says on Jul 31, 2007, 09:09:

Glad I am poor, that comment just gave me a headache trying to do the math in my head. Would drive me nuts if I had to deal with those computations ever day.

Semper Fidelis !

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Leeroy says on Jul 31, 2007, 09:21:

Apparently having a million pesos here doesn't make you a "millionario". Fair enough, if it did, being a millionario wouldn't be anything special now would it?

0 funny, 0 helpful.

juanalejo says on Jul 31, 2007, 10:01:

It is not only in Colombia, it is in the spanish language. Billion is a million millions rather than a thousand million like in english. In spanish, a thousand million is millardo which is rarely used in Colombia but very commonly used in Venezuela.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Tinto (Moderator) says on Jul 31, 2007, 11:21:

I thought Colombia was going to chop off some zeros? Think of the savings in ink and narrower columns in spreadsheets! ;-)

Exchange Rates: New York Closing Snapshot for Monday, July 30, 2007
U.S.-dollar foreign-exchange rates in late New York trading

Country/currency Currency per USD Monday
Americas
Argentina peso* 3.13
Brazil real 1.88
Canada dollar 1.07
1-mos forward 1.07
3-mos forward 1.07
6-mos forward 1.07
Chile peso 523.29
Colombia peso 1,972.39
Ecuador US dollar 1.00
Mexico peso* 10.92
Peru new sol 3.16
Uruguay peso† 23.64
Venezuela bolivar 2,145.92

Asia-Pacific
Australian dollar 1.17
China yuan 7.57
Hong Kong dollar 7.83
India rupee 40.29
Indonesia rupiah 9,208.00
Japan yen 118.95
1-mos forward 118.43
3-mos forward 117.58
6-mos forward 116.31
Malaysia ringgit§ 3.46
New Zealand dollar 1.31
Pakistan rupee 60.42
Philippines peso 45.52
Singapore dollar 1.51
South Korea won 923.28
Taiwan dollar 32.83
Thailand baht 29.85

Europe
Czech Rep. koruna** 20.51
Denmark krone 5.43
Euro area euro 0.73
Hungary forint 183.86
Malta lira 0.31
Norway krone 5.84
Poland zloty 2.76
Russia ruble‡ 25.56
Slovak Rep koruna 24.46
Sweden krona 6.72
Switzerland franc 1.20
1-mos forward 1.20
3-mos forward 1.20
6-mos forward 1.19
Turkey lira** 1.29
UK pound 0.49
1-mos forward 0.49
3-mos forward 0.49
6-mos forward 0.50

Middle East/Africa
Bahrain dinar 0.38
Eqypt pound* 5.66
Israel shekel 4.33
Jordan dinar 0.71
Kuwait dinar 0.28
Lebanon pound 1,511.94
Saudi Arabia riyal 3.75
South Africa rand 7.12
UAE dirham 3.67

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Tinto (Moderator) says on Jul 31, 2007, 11:24:

Edit: Excluding Zimbabwe, think only Indonesia and Venezuela have currency units "smaller" than Colombia

0 funny, 0 helpful.

mrgizmo says on Jul 31, 2007, 11:29:

If they chopped some zeroes transactions would not be as complicated. Better yet how about changing the currency altogether like they did in Europe? We could call it Laeuro, LOL. Can you imagine the fiasko?

Behind every successful man, there's a nagging woman

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Robert Jorge says on Jul 31, 2007, 11:45:

Well my trusty adding machine says 1.8 billion is correct. However, I never considered - or even knew - that Colombians had a different definition of what a billion was. So, if I interpret what has been posted above correctly, what is 1 billion to a norte Americano is "1 mil milliones" in Colombia?

--"I believe in making the world safe for our children. But not for our children's children, because I don't think that children should be having sex." - Jack Handy

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Robert Jorge says on Jul 31, 2007, 11:49:

I am sorry, 1 billion in the US is the equivalent of "1 millardo" ... but a lot of Colombians might not know that term? I didn't realize everybody looked at even math terms in a different way. My whole universe has now been turned upside down.

--"I believe in making the world safe for our children. But not for our children's children, because I don't think that children should be having sex." - Jack Handy

0 funny, 0 helpful.

ColombianoGringo says on Jul 31, 2007, 12:23:

I have often thought that Colombia should consider the same move that Mexico did with their peso. They went from old pesos to new pesos a while back. I think it was 1,000 old pesos were equal to one new peso. My only concern would be that this might cause a fair amount of inflation. I don't recall how the switch affected Mexico's inflation rate.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Mr. Hollywood says on Jul 31, 2007, 13:38:

Yeah, I've had the runaround the difference in English and Spanish for describing this 1,000,000,000.00 (or 1.000.000.000,00).

Funny thing is that I have a Colombian friend who went to high school and university in the US and HE also can't figure out the Colombian system of counting billions.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

droble77 says on Jul 31, 2007, 13:39:

If you can read Spanish, you see in the Colombian newspapers all the time amounts like "150,000 millones" At first, I thought it was an interesting cultural quirk until I remembered the real reason. :-)

0 funny, 0 helpful.

europeantraveler says on Jul 31, 2007, 15:46:

Actually, the international standard of counting in any language is the "long scale", where one "bi-llion" equals 1.000.000 (one million) to the power of 2, hence a million millions. It's quite consistent: one "tri-llion" is one million to the power of 3, and so on.

Only the US adopted the "short scale", where a billion means 1.000 millions, whereas other English-speaking countries initially stuck with the long scale. Only in the last few decades has the US usage of "billion" spread to other English-speaking countries. In almost all other languages and countries (the notable exception being Brazil), the long scale is still the standard. The US "billion" is therefore called either a milliard or a thousand millions almost anywhere else.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Robert Jorge says on Jul 31, 2007, 20:14:

Interesting ... thanks for that explanation europeantraveler.

--"I believe in making the world safe for our children. But not for our children's children, because I don't think that children should be having sex." - Jack Handy

0 funny, 0 helpful.

chrispej says on Jul 31, 2007, 21:59:

Where's Carl Sagan when you need him?

0 funny, 0 helpful.

BAQ says on Aug 1, 2007, 08:28:

GOD I HATE MATH !!!

Semper Fidelis !

0 funny, 0 helpful.