Anyone who’s done business in China has found themselves in the awkward position of missing a zero. I mean, all of a sudden you write out the number and realize something is a tenth the cost you thought it was, or maybe 10x more. (Or is it just me? I confess this has happened more than once, usually on odd items of labor that are so much cheaper in China than the US.)

If you’re reading this blog you probably know the reason, but briefly, for non-Chinese speakers: the issue is that Chinese groups big numbers by four zeroes while English does it by three. So 1.5 million in Chinese is something more like 150 ten-thousand. Or look at it as 150,0000 rather than 1,500,000. Sounds easy enough to deal with, but once you throw in unfamiliar costs and currency exchanges, it gets messy in a hurry.

As far as I know, though, no one deals with it by trying to use Chinese in an English way. I’ve never heard of someone saying or writing 17 thousand (十七千, shíqī qiān). It just doesn’t work. Maybe like in English trying to say 17 ten-thousand doesn’t work for 170,000. Continue…