Marco Cimarosti recently said:

> John Cowan wrote:
> > Marco Cimarosti scripsit:
> >
> > > Consequently, Indians write 12345678901 as "1234,5678,901"
> > because, in
> > > Indian English, the number corresponds to this phrase:
> > >
> > > "One thousands two hundreds thirty-four (1234) crores
> > > five thousands six hundreds seventy-eight (5678) lakhs
> > > nine hundreds and one (901)"
> >
> > Is it not rather 123,4567,8901, read "one hundred and
> > twenty-three crores, four thousand five hundred and
> > sixty-seven lakhs, eight thousand nine hundred and one"?
> >
> > According to my sources 1 lakh = 10^4.
>
>
> Ooops! I miscounted the digits in my source:
>
> http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0508791.html
>
> Which, anyway, doesn't match your source, as it says that a lakh (or "lac")
> is 100,000 = 10^5.
>
> So, the subdivision according to InfoPlease should be:
>
> 1,23456,78,901
>
> But that 5-digit group makes me think that I have some other thing wrong!
> Are there no Indians on the Qalam list? Come on, stop laughing at this
> discussion and tell us how it actually works!

I'm not Indian but looking through a selection of books in the Learn x in 30
days by Balaji Publications of Madras has

lakh = 1,00,000 and
crore = 1,00,00,000.

Half the books don't bother with commas at all, and the Urdu one uses
English style commas.

Tim

--
Tim Partridge. Any opinions expressed are mine only and not those of my employer