Numbers

I was translating something the other day where a land measurement was written; it was 1.766,4846 hectares. Once again, on automatic pilot, I first just typed the same figure, and only when I was checking my translation did I see this mistake, and I changed around the full stops and commas—the land measurement in the English form of writing them is 1,766.4846 hectares (yes, around 1,766.5 hectares) and not approximately 1.8 hectares. Indonesian uses the European system of writing numbers, with the comma for the decimal marker and the point for the thousands separator.

Tempo

October 2, 2018

This made me face the fact that there is a huge gap in my knowledge of Indonesian in the vocabulary to do with basic mathematics (let alone everything else related like the exact sciences and so on). I decided I had to learn some basics. As usual, one question immediately led to another, and I am learning interesting things, and boring my friends and particularly their children (thank you Jojo and Momo).

Take the words for ‘number’.

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