On Oct 24, 10 03:11, Rainer Deyke wrote:
On 10/23/2010 10:53, Kagamin wrote:
It's how their language builds numbers. Numbers written in ideographs
use this grouping, but this doesn't mean, they use the same grouping
for arabic digits. For example, amazon.co.jp uses arabic numbers and
western 3-digit grouping.
Using groupings of three digits in Japanese seems extremely awkward,
especially for larger numbers, since you would have to mentally regroup
the digits in groups of four in order to read it. It's not just the
written language but the spoken language that uses groups of four. For
example, the number 1,234,567,890 would be read as 12億, 3456万, 7890.
If amazon.jp uses groups of three, then my initial reaction is
"imperfect localization".
[Off topic]
While it is read in groups of 4, I've never seen the number grouped by 4
digits in any part of East Asia. It is enter written as groups of three
"1,234,567,890", without grouping "1234567890" or using the native units
like "12億", "十二億三千四百五十六万七千八百九十" etc.
Also, even in English there are cases where groupings other than three
make sense. Consider:
int price_in_cents = 54_95;
