=?ISO-8859-1?Q?When_did_=91millions'_become_=91million'=3F?=

Question

The standard usage in the UK (and, I believe, elsewhere in the world where English is the vernacular (1)) is that, as a (regular) numeral, ?million' is invariable. (Though, as an approximation, one treats it as an ordinary noun - ?millions of'.)
But this was not always so ? a Google search on ?two millions' pulls up a lot of recent examples apparently from ?non-vernacular' countries; but also a fair number of older examples.

When and where did the usage start to change, I wonder?

(There's a parallel, perhaps, in the change (in the UK, at least) in the form in which street names were written. For a long time ?Regent-street' and ?Belgrave-square' were written thus in newspapers ? even after World War 2, I believe. But for decades now, ?Regent Street' and ?Belgrave Square have been de rigueur.)
(1) Is there a technical term for this? I mean the class of countries that includes the UK, USA; Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and excludes (for example) India and former British colonies in Africa (where English may be an official or widely used language, but not the mother-tongue of most of the population.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1](1) Is there a technical term for this? I mean the class of countries that includes the UK, USA; ... Africa (where English may be an official or widely used language, but not the mother-tongue of most of the population.[/nq]
How about 'Anglophone countries'?
Sebastian.

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[nq:1](There's a parallel, perhaps, in the change (in the UK, at least) in the form in which street names were ... even after World War 2, I believe. But for decades now, =91Regent Street' and =91Belgrave Square have been de rigueur.)[/nq]
The same change took place in the US, or in the New York metropolitan area anyway (judging from the New York Times), but the change seems to have occurred well before World War II, and probably would have looked oddly old-fashioned by then. (New York was typically written "New-York", too.) It was true of streets, anyway, but I'm not sure it was true of squares.
Another interesting thing I've noticed in the New York Times archives is that "in", not "on", was used with respect to streets, and well into some surprisingly late period. (E.g., "An apartment house in Fifth-avenue".) It's possible that in common speech people were all already saying "on", but that in higher-falutin newspapers a British style was affected.
[nq:1](1) Is there a technical term for this? I mean the class of countries that includes the UK, USA; ... Africa (where English may be an official or widely used language, but not the mother-tongue of most of the population.[/nq]
I generally say "the Anglophone countries" or "Anglophonia".

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...
}> (1) Is there a technical term for this? I mean the class of }> countries that includes the UK, USA; Canada, Australia and New }> Zealand, and excludes (for example) India and former British colonies }> in Africa (where English may be an official or widely used language, }> but not the mother-tongue of most of the population. }
} I generally say "the Anglophone countries" or "Anglophonia".

Beats "Angloidia" by a mile.

R. J. Valentine
NTBCESISBSC.

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[nq:1]Another interesting thing I've noticed in the New York Times archives is that "in", not "on", was used with respect ... that in common speech people were all already saying "on", but that in higher-falutin newspapers a British style was affected.[/nq]
I've noticed before that some Americans and Australians describe certain language variants in this way: aren't these older-fashioned usages as perfectly American or Australian as the newer or more demotic forms? Consequently, is it entirely fair to label them "affectations"?
Of course I don't mean that such affectations don't exist. I don't believe it would be natural to say "launderette", for example: it would probably mean "Please note how cosmopolitan I am", as once did my use of "Sure!".
[nq:1]I generally say "the Anglophone countries" or "Anglophonia".[/nq]
I like "Anglophonia"; but I fear it won't catch on!

Mike.

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[nq:2]The standard usage in the UK (and, I believe, elsewhere ... (1)) is that, as a (regular) numeral, =91million' is invariable.[/nq]
[nq:1]I see that as "OEmillion" with "OE" squished together. Is it my newsreader, or is it yours? One of us must be violating some standards...[/nq]
I see it as "^Qmillion".

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[nq:1]The standard usage in the UK (and, I believe, elsewhere in the world where English is the vernacular (1)) is that, as a (regular) numeral, ?million' is invariable.[/nq]
I see that as "OEmillion" with "OE" squished together. Is it my newsreader, or is it yours? One of us must be violating some standards...

SML
http://www.pirate-women.com

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[nq:2]I see that as "OEmillion" with "OE" squished together. Is it my newsreader, or is it yours? One of us must be violating some standards...[/nq]
[nq:1]I see it as "[/nq]^Qmillion".
This is Google claiming (falsely) that the left single "smart quote" character is in ISO-8859-1. It's not, although it is in Windows-1252. I believe that OE does the same thing. Agent is clever enough to work out what was meant.

Don Aitken

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Quoth Sara Moffat Lorimer:
[nq:2]The standard usage in the UK (and, I believe, elsewhere ... (1)) is that, as a (regular) numeral, ¡million' is invariable.[/nq]
[nq:1]I see that as "OEmillion" with "OE" squished together. Is it my newsreader, or is it yours? One of us must be violating some standards...[/nq]
Lauramans posting (via Google) was marked ISO-8859-1, but the character in question, Hex is outside of the range of ISO-8859-1, thus effectively undefined, and any newsreader can just guess its value. A Western Windows would guess CP-1252, thus the intended left quotation mark, but your Mac would never assume a Windows code.

Oliver

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Quoth Don Aitken:
[nq:2]I see it as "[/nq]^Qmillion".
[nq:1]This is Google claiming (falsely) that the left single "smart quote" character is in ISO-8859-1. It's not, although it is in Windows-1252. I believe that OE does the same thing. Agent is clever enough to work out what was meant.[/nq]
You beat me to that one. Well, most Windows programs would make the same guess as Agent, but Mac or Unix machines will have other preferences. As you can see, my software (not Xnews, but Morver), trying to avoid CP-1252, changes to other codepages, ISO-8859-7 the last time. I wonder if these are interpreted correctly everywhere.

Oliver C

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Okay, so this one time? In band camp? Oliver Cromm was all, like:
[nq:1]Quoth Don Aitken:[/nq]
^Qmillion".
[nq:2]This is Google claiming (falsely) that the left single "smart ... Agent is clever enough to work out what was meant.[/nq]
[nq:1]You beat me to that one. Well, most Windows programs would make the same guess as Agent, but Mac or ... trying to avoid CP-1252, changes to other codepages, ISO-8859-7 the last time. I wonder if these are interpreted correctly everywhere.[/nq]
I don't know what's going on...I see the original message and the last few followups with the smart quote, but Lauraman's version shows an inverted bang instead..
And now, when I display the message to which this is a reply, my browser tells me I need to install character-set support for Greek, a requirement to which I can't even acquiesce since our system administrator won't let us install character sets..
(One of these days, somebody's going to post something that comes out in Devanagari and Runic, and then where will we be?)...r

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?When_did_=91millions'_become_=91million'=3F?=

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