Ever counted to one billion? in French!

We tend to deal in more 'normal' numbers at Cle France but we would be happy to have clients with a budget of say 'un billion' but what are these big numbers?

Les grands nombres (large numbers) are hard to understand in any language. The difference between one trillion and one billion seems so abstract that it’s impossible to conceptualise the huge quantities that are being referenced.

French numbers are already difficult at 70 and 80 et en plus (and what’s more) the punctuation for numbers is not the same as in English. Now add on to that the confusion of un billion not being the same number as one billion!

The technical description of why they’re different is that in English every number greater than a million gets a new name for every number that is a thousand times larger than the previous number. Mais en français (but in French), every number greater than a million gets a new name for every number that is a million times larger than the previous number.

Photo by Jorge Franganillo on Flickr.

After that confusing paragraph, I can already hear the shouting.

Je ne comprends pas !

I don’t understand!

To make things easier to understand, voici des exemples (here are some examples):

One million 1,000,000

One billion 1,000,000,000 (UK 1,000,000,000,000 and America 1,000,000,000)

One trillion 1,000,000,000,000

One quadrillion 1,000,000,000,000,000

Un million 1 000 000

Un milliard 1 000 000 000

Un billion 1 000 000 000 000

Un billiard 1 000 000 000 000 000

The French words un milliard et un billiard (one billion and one quadrillion) make these grands nombres a bit confusing. Ce qui est important (what’s important) is remembering that un milliard is not one million and un billion is not one billion.

Heuresement, there’s another way to express these large numbers if you get confused. Un milliard (one billion) can also be called mille millions (thousand millions), and un billiard can be mille billions. Keep all this in mind the next time you have to count les zéros of a large number!

As a challenge, try to count all the way to un milliard in French!

One chap who is very good with numbers is Ben, our Cle France dedicated currency expert.

Ben Amrany from FC Exchange follow this link or phone and ask for myself and quote "Cle France" on 020 7989 0000.

You may contact me directly using this form (click here) with your requirement and I will explain the options that are available to you in getting the best exchange rate.