The Sinitic Word for "million" in Southeast Asian Mandarin

August 10, 2024 @ 12:38 pm · Filed by under Numbers, Topolects, Variation

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[This is a guest post by Mok Ling about the Sinitic word for "million" in Southeast Asian Mandarin in general, and Indonesian Mandarin in particular.]

I recently had a conversation with a Mandarin-speaking Chinese-Indonesian friend who used the word 條 tiáo to mean "million" (as in 1 000 000) in the place of the more universal 百萬 bǎiwàn. After asking our other Southeast Asian Mandarin-speaking (mostly Singaporean and Malaysian) friends, we found that none of them have ever said 條 tiáo for "million" — all of them say 百萬 bǎiwàn.

Now I know for a fact that Indonesian Hokkien has a similar-sounding word for "million" — 兆 tiāu/tiǎu (Wiktionary says the first reading is more common in Xiamen/Amoy and Zhangzhou/Changchiu while the second is more common in Quanzhou/Chinchiu). This use of 兆 for "million" is also recorded in 華夷通語 Huâ–Î Thong-gú, an 1883 (Kangxi 9) dictionary by a Chinese-Malay translator named 林衡南 Lim Heng-nam (image available upon request), glossed as 寔撈突轆沙 sit-la-tut lak-sa (Malay: seratus laksa — "laksa" is obviously from Sanskrit; modern Malay no longer uses myriads, but millions "juta". Note also that the circle under 轆 on the image signifies a vernacular reading, that is lak, rather than the literary reading lok).


I've also noticed that in Quanzhou Hokkien (at least according to Wiktionary), the pronunciation of 兆 tiǎu is homophonous with 條 tiǎu, as in the famous Hokkien rice noodle dish 粿條 kué-tiâu.

I believe it's not very far-fetched to say this homophonic confusion is where the "million" sense of 條 tiáo originates. I'd be interested to know what Language Log readers think of this little theory.

Another friend theorized 條 tiáo may be from Hokkien 吊 tiàu, especially considering the connection to the late Qing/early Republican denomination of currency — 1 吊 is a string of 1000 cash coins, though not always. I find this less likely than my 條-兆 conflation theory, mostly because it does not explain the use of 條 tiáo outside financial contexts.

I happen to be a native speaker of Hainanese (海南話), in which 條 and 兆 are both /ʔɗiau²²/ in my personal idiolect (in Hainanese, the Middle Chinese 陽平 and 陽去 tones have merged). Just shows that this word is not only present in Hokkien.

[end of guest post]

 

Addendum:  Etymological and usage notes on Indic "lakh"

A lakh (/læk, lɑːk/; abbreviated L; sometimes written lac) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; scientific notation: 105). In the Indian 2, 2, 3 convention of digit grouping, it is written as 1,00,000.c For example, in India, 150,000 rupees becomes 1.5 lakh rupees, written as ₹1,50,000 or INR 1,50,000.

It is widely used both in official and other contexts in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It is often used in Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan English.

In Indian English, the word is used both as an attributive and non-attributive noun with either an unmarked or marked ("-s") plural, respectively. For example: "1 lakh people"; "lakhs of people"; "20 lakh rupees"; "lakhs of rupees". In the abbreviated form, usage such as "₹5L" or "₹5 lac" (for "5 lakh rupees") is common. In this system of numeration, 100 lakh is called one crore and is equal to 10 million.

The modern word lakh derives from Sanskrit: लक्ष, romanized: lakṣa, originally denoting "mark, target, stake in gambling", but also used as the numeral for "100,000" in Gupta-era Classical Sanskrit (Yājñavalkya Smṛti, Harivaṃśa).

(Wikipedia)

 

Selected readings

August 10, 2024 @ 12:38 pm · Filed by under Numbers, Topolects, Variation


14 Comments

  1. Stephen O'Harrow said,

    August 10, 2024 @ 2:48 pm

    The word for "million" in vernacular Vietnamese is "triệu" which does not appear to be related to the rather rare Chinese 頫 (Fǔ), but that is the only other word I know for million in Mandarin – they usually say 百萬 (bǎi wàn), I believe.

  2. Mark Hansell said,

    August 10, 2024 @ 3:58 pm

    I always thought 兆 (Mand. zhào) meant hundred million, not million. Is this one of those situations like "billion" in American vs. British English, where a number changes its value by several orders of magnitude?

  3. Mok Ling 莫齡 said,

    August 10, 2024 @ 6:13 pm

    @ Mark Hansell

    Wiktionary and other dictionaries tell me 兆 zhào either means "trillion" in Taiwanese Mandarin or "million" in the PRC (it's also used as the equivalent of the prefix "mega-", as in 兆像素相機 zhàoxiàngsù xiàngjī, "megapixel camera").

  4. Mok Ling 莫齡 said,

    August 10, 2024 @ 6:17 pm

    Thank you so much for featuring me, Prof. Mair! I've been a long-time reader of LL.

    I'd be happy to regale you with more points of interest re: Southeast Asian Mandarin if you'd care for more.

  5. Chris Button said,

    August 10, 2024 @ 6:50 pm

    It occurs to me how you say in colloquial Japanese "chō" (超) as an intensifier meaning "super, very, really". I wonder if 兆 as a loan for this mega number is somehow related? They reconstruct in Middle Chinese with slightly different onsets (voiceless aspirated versus voiced) and tone, but are the same otherwise.

  6. Jerry Packard said,

    August 11, 2024 @ 11:22 am

    兆 zhao4 is listed in the Xinhua Zidian as 百萬

  7. Mark Hansell said,

    August 11, 2024 @ 2:33 pm

    (Ooops, sorry, I meant trillion, of course 亿 is hundred million.) I can imagine huge problems if the same word 兆 can mean either million or trillion (say in banking, government budgeting, contracts, etc.). Is one considered the absolute standard meaning? Or is the issue totally avoided by the use of arabic numerals throughout financial and scientific systems…remembering the space probe that went off course because they mixed up feet and meters in their calculations, how much worse if they mixed up the two meanings of 兆 ?

  8. Philip Taylor said,

    August 11, 2024 @ 3:35 pm

    "I can imagine huge problems if the same word 兆 can mean either million or trillion (say in banking, government budgeting, contracts, etc.)" — I don't know about "million or trillion", but "milliard or billion" is a well-attested problem. What, to an American, is a billion, is to a Briton a milliard, and what, to a Briton, is a billion is (I think) a trillion to an American.

  9. Jacob said,

    August 12, 2024 @ 5:32 pm

    I've only encountered 兆 in the context of data, as in 1 megabyte or a million bytes.

  10. Ross Presser said,

    August 13, 2024 @ 10:20 am

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale

    In the short scale, popularized by and universally used in the US, a million is 10^6, a billion is 10^9, a trillion is 10^12.

    In the long scale, formerly but (per Wikipedia) not currently used in England since 1974, a milliard is 10^6, a million is 10^9, a billion is 10^12. In many English books of popular science since the 1980s (e.g. Cosmos by Carl Sagan), you'll see the controversy avoided by calling 10^9 "a thousand million" and 10^12 "a million million".

  11. Philip Taylor said,

    August 13, 2024 @ 10:42 am

    If that is really what Wikipedia says, Ross, then it is seriously wrong. From the OED, second edition :

    milliard

    (ˈmɪlɪəd)

    [a. F. milliard, f. mille thousand.]

    A thousand millions.

       1793 A. Young Examp. France (ed. 3) 185, I may state their extra resources, from the regal and ecclesiastical plunder, at four milliards.    
    1823 Byron Juan xiv. c, I'll bet you millions, milliards.    1874 Deutsch Rem. 290 All those untold milliards of human beings.

    but the Wikipedia article that I have just consulted doesn't reflect your version — for me, it says :

    Previously in British English (but not in American English), the word "billion" referred exclusively to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is not common anymore, and the word has been used to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for several decades.[4]

    The term milliard could also be used to refer to 1,000,000,000; whereas "milliard" is rarely used in English,[5] variations on this name often appear in other languages.

    Perhaps we are looking in different places …

  12. KIRINPUTRA said,

    August 16, 2024 @ 10:02 am

    兆 & 億 are an iceberg that I figure is pretty well-explored. Here’s an interesting line from the 風俗通義 of c. 1800 years ago.

    十萬謂之億十億謂之兆十兆謂之經十經謂之垓

    Here’s an entry (in sinographic Taioanese, unfort.) that dips into the rabbit hole from a Taioanese or Hoklo perspective (but note the interesting glosses from Lobscheid):

    https://ji.taioan.org/gisu/?n=4615

    兆 tiāu/tiǎu (Wiktionary says the first reading is more common in Xiamen/Amoy and Zhangzhou/Changchiu while the second is more common in Quanzhou/Chinchiu)

    These are not two readings. They’re two ways of representing one reading. This is a Tone 6 reading — “TIÃU”, if we borrow the T6 diacritic from the traditional Teochew romanization. However, T6 & T7 are merged in Amoy Hokkien, which the traditional Hokkien romanization is based on. Hokkien convention is to refer to the merged tone as “Tone 7”, and mark it in writing with a macron (“TIĀU”), just like T7 in Teochew. We could just as well call the merged tone “Tone 6”. (The caron as T6 marker is out of place here, but that’s another story.)

    I've also noticed that in Quanzhou Hokkien (at least according to Wiktionary), the pronunciation of 兆 tiǎu is homophonous with 條 tiǎu, as in the famous Hokkien rice noodle dish 粿條 kué-tiâu.

    The tones are definitely different.

    兆 tiãu
    條 tiâu

    This suggests yet another problem with using the caron for T6: It invites vertically dyslexic mis-readings.

    Mok Ling’s theory may not be lost, though. TIÃU (T6) does, or did, mean million in Teochew, according to the Duffus & Fielde dictionaries. The modern 蔡俊明 dictionary (strictly continental, understandably) doesn’t have the word. T6 in standing (“citation”) form has a high rising contour in much of Teochew, whereas T5 in standing form has a rising (and, in some dialects, high rising) contour in Hokkien. Teochew-Hokkien bilingualism is common around the Straits of Malacca and it’s possible that some community (however large or small) reinterpreted Teochew TIÃU to be Hokkien TIÂU (T5), or otherwise borrowed TIÃU into Hokkien as TIÂU.

    NOTE. Considering the roles of Hokkien, Teochew & Mandarin in Indonesia, yet another takeaway from this discussion might be that non-state languages are doomed, in on-the-grid places, at least.

    NOTE. Vietnamese TRIỆU seems to be cognate. The tone is off, though.

  13. Mok Ling 莫齡 said,

    August 16, 2024 @ 7:07 pm

    @ KIRINPUTRA

    The plot thickens! I didn't manage to catch the detail about Amoy Hokkien's tones 6 & 7.

    The role of Teochew in this confusion very interesting. A good friend of mine is studying the koinéization of Southern Min in Southeast Asia. This might be a good case for them.

  14. KIRINPUTRA said,

    August 21, 2024 @ 11:54 am

    @ Mok Ling 莫齡

    Yes!

    Have they published or publicized any findings so far?

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