But that is the logic that should be used when reading a number out. In any case, I have never seen a split into blocks of 4 when writing a number down. Not sure if Japanese has this ambiguity, but 千 (10^3) certainly exists and doesn't fit the 'pure' traditional system. 亿，兆，京 now sometimes mean smaller powers in different contexts for convenience. For example, in english we could say one million billion = 10^15 = one thousand trillion). It also provides a more unique way to say a number. This system of creating a new word whenever the length doubles seems natural, as it is the minimal set of words you need to represent any arbitrarily large number without repeating yourself. I have seen 亿 and 兆 used in these definitions in modern Chinese and Korean, and certainly 億 in japanese for money e.g. (By the way, I was surprised to find that English-speaking people used long (6-digit) scale until relatively recently.) However I couldn't find why and when the Chinese language started to use the 4-digit scale instead of 3. This 4-digit loop was borrowed from Chinese numeric system. This is exactly how the Japanese language count large numbers today.īefore 塵劫記, Japanese had a relatively small vocabulary for big numbers, and 万【よろづ】 (=10 4) seems to have been the largest unit.
In the year 1634 edition, the 8-digit grouping was completely removed, and the simple 4-digit grouping system after 万(=10 4) remained. Soon after that, the 4-digit grouping was introduced in a revised edition of 塵劫記 published in 1631, and 1 極 became 10 48. and so on, until it reached 1 極, which was only(?) 10 15. A different kanji was assigned to each digit. In the first edition of the book, there was no "4-digit grouping" as we know today, at least for relatively small numbers (smaller than 1 極【ごく】).
#Mayberry 2048 written in conji how to
The following is a summary of this Wikipedia article.Ī math book called 塵劫記【じんこうき】, published in 1627, was the first book that described (and probably defined) how to count large numbers in Japanese.
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