funky numbers

In Korean, when you get up to very large numbers, you have to mentally divide them by 10,000s, not by 1,000s as we do in most Western countries. What's bizarre is that, even if Koreans have to think this way about large numbers, they write the numbers the Western way, i.e., with a comma separating the thousands.

10 십/ship

100 백/baek

1,000 천/cheon

10,000 만/man

100,000 십만/shim-man (ship + man) = 10 × 10,000

1,000,000 백만/baeng-man (baek + man) = 100 × 10,000

10,000,000 천만/cheon-man = 1,000 × 10,000

100,000,000 억/eok = 100 million (만 × 만, i.e., 10,000 × 10,000)

1,000,000,000 십억/shibeok (ship + eok) = 1 billion (10 × 100,000,000)

10,000,000,000 백억/baegeok (baek + eok) = 10 billion (100 × 100,000,000)

100,000,000,000 천억/cheoneok (cheon + eok) = 100 billion (1,000 × 100,000,000)

1,000,000,000,000 조/jo = 1 trillion = 만 × 억 (10,000 × 100,000,000,000)

And you thought it was confusing that the French say/write 90 as 4 × 20 + 10 (quatre-vingt-dix)? Or how the French say 70 is 60 + 10 (soixante-dix)?

Switch to India, and you have the number crore, which means 10 million. Divide that by 100, and you get 100,000, or a lakh.

Back to Korean. A number like 13,728,246,595 might be rendered as

(1)백3십7억2천8백24만6천5백9십5 (major divisions in blue). More simply,

137억2824만6천5백9십5. (137eok2824man6cheon5baek9ship5.)

Mentally, Koreans divide the number up this way:

137,2824,6595. So in Korean minds, there's a comma every fourth place. But in the end, Koreans write the number as we Westerners do:

13,728,246,595. Back where we started.