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- Topic: French >
- "Le château a mille ans."
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I am noticing with all the recently added lessons it looks as though they have been added by a native french speaker as they are insisting on a more direct translation from the french and ignoring contextually correct English translations. But if you report the sentence as a problem, they will usually adjust the answers. It is frustrating but on the other side, each time I repeat it gives me a better understanding of the french sentence construction. It is all useful in the end, the goal is to learn French, not level up in a game after all :)
Sorry, Rebecca, I would just like to comment on this, as I think your note could be confusing for English language learners. I have had many European students who found this point difficult to remember.
In written English, in the UK and Ireland, we generally use the convention of using commas to break up numbers of four or more digits. A comma is placed to the left of every third digit. We use a dot (called a decimal point) to the left of any decimals.
However, in many non-English speaking European countries, the opposite applies. I guess that this is what you were referring to.
For example, in Spanish, French, Italian and German, ten thousand euro and seventy cent (not cents) is written €10.000,70
49,5% is almost half in these languages.
In English, as used in the UK and Ireland, these numbers are written €10,000.70 and 49.5%.
Here are some more examples in English:
5,890,375 - approx. 5.8 m NB: m is short for million, in this context. It is short for metre(s) in other situations.
9.74963 - just a little under 10
£9.99 - the price of an item that the retailer wants to suggest is less than £10
365 days in non-leap years
64,596,800 = 64.6 million - UK population
73.8% - almost three quarters
0.003% - almost nothing
1,000 years ago = one thousand years ago = a thousand years ago
1,200 years ago = twelve hundred years ago = one thousand two hundred years ago
14,649 - roughly fifteen thousand
500,000 - five hundred thousand = half a million
The important exception to remember is that there is no comma in a date (a year) .
The United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark joined the European Economic Community in 1973.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is thought to have been completed around 2560 CE / BC.
Sometimes, the comma is omitted in print, or on a computer screen. A narrow space may be used instead, e.g. The current UK population is 54 596 800.
Unfortunately, I cannot insert any reference links from my phone. I will come back and do that later, in case anyone would like more information.
EDIT: References
http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-numbers.html
http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/commas_with_numbers.htm
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/63335.html
http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-world-separates-its-decimals.html
I hope this helps.