In addition to everything else that I've said on the subject, in both the
original article and my addendum on holophrasis posted here on 23 May, one
can also look at numbers differently.

Most numbering is done with a base of ten in ordinary usage, but there's
vestiges and evidence of other bases being used in some contexts. Let's
stick with ten-based numeration, though.

We have names for various powers of ten: the first power is ten itself, the
second is "hundred", the third is "thousand" and then different societies
may work the additional names differently.

At present on Earth, there are three main systems for naming those larger
numbers in English (all three agree up to "thousand"). Conventionally, they
are called the "short system" (used principally in North America), the
"long system" (formerly used principally in Europe and former British
colonial possessions, but due to US influence, is gradually being abandoned
in favor of the short system) and the "Indian system" (used principally on
the Indian subcontinent, alongside both the long and short systems).

In the "short system", after "thousand", each new name comes with the third
power of ten following: sixth is "million", ninth is "billion", twelfth is
"trillion", and so on. On any one planet, it would be unlikely to see short
system "quadrillion" (fifteenth power) used, even for budget numbers in
credits (local currencies may be a different matter), but at the Imperial
level, one might even see "quintillion" (eightteenth power) or even
"sextillion" (twenty-first power).

In the "long system", the same new names are used, with the sixth power
still being called "million", but after that, they come with each _sixth_
power of ten - "billion" is the twelfth power, "trillion" is the
eightteenth power, and so on. Some usages admit third-power modifications
of the previous names, substituting "-iard" for "-ion" - "milliard" for
ninth power, based on "million", for example - but those usages are
comparatively rare, and the intermediate third powers are generally just
called "thousand x", where x is the previous name - "thousand million"
rather than "milliard", "thousand billion" rather than "billiard", etc.

The Indian system comes up with new names more often: instead of every
_third_ power of ten after "thousand", Indian names occur after every
_second_ power of ten (and when writing the numbers, the comma occurs every
second position to the left of the thousands comma). The fifth power is
"lakh", the seventh is "crore", and there are other, less-commonly-used
names beyond that (it's normal to see "lakh" and "crore" combined; the
twelfth power [short system "trillion"] is "lakh crore").

Briefly venturing away from base ten, we find vestiges of base twelve in
the terms "dozen" and "gross", representing the first two powers of twelve.
The term "score" comes indirectly from base-twenty usage (and modern French
continues to have vestiges of this; numbers larger than twenty are
described as x-twenties-plus-y). MesoAmerican numbers were written in a
mixed-base system, using five and twenty as the two bases. The
pre-decimalization Pound Sterling was divided using bases twenty (twenty
shillings per pound) and twelve (twelve pence per shilling) both.

One can also use a partially subtractive system, instead of a purely
additive system: written Roman numerals use this model; one normally does
not write "five plus four ones" (VIIII) for "nine"; instead, it's "one less
than ten" (IX). The Roman system only admitted subtracting one instance of
the previous power of ten from a number; one conventionally wrote
"ninety-nine" as "XCIX" (ten less than one-hundred, plus one less than ten)
rather than "IC" (one less than one-hundred).

One can use any of these to give the sort of foreign flavor discussed in
the original article, without impairing understandability significantly -
but they can still be enough to cause the sort of difficulty that comes
with making wrong assumptions...

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