# 亿



## nzfauna

Is it possible that 亿, was also used in old or obsolete Japanese? I note that the first part of it also appears in other obsolete Japanese number characters.

This page says that 亿 is 'translingual'.  What does that mean - what other languages is it used in?
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/亿

This page shows some obsolete Japanese numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_numbers#Formal_numbers 

Many thanks


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## Cowrie

According to Wiktionary (Japanese ver.), 亿 is a simplified Chinese character（簡体字）, and 簡体字 was devised (in China) in the 1960’s. 

I don’t see 亿 in the site you linked to show obsolete Japanese numbers. Do you mean “the first part” is the left half of it?


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## nzfauna

Yes Cowrie, thanks, the left half


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## Cowrie

Hi, nzfauna!

The left half of 亿 is used in many Chinese characters (not only in number characters), obsolete or modern. 

In case you need more information about 簡体字, see the entry “Simplified Chinese character” in Wikipedia (English version). 

Asking in the Chinese forum if anybody knows how the character 亿 was created/selected when the Chinese government was in the process of preparing the list of the official Simplified Chinese characters might make things more clear.


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## tos1

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2871633
In conection with the thread, I hope my second reply in the another thread helps.


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## Cowrie

I just wanted to add the reason I wrote “Asking in the Chinese forum … might make things more clear.” in my previous post. 

If the character 亿 was added to the list because it had widely been used for a long time as an unofficial (at the time) number character, it is possible that the character 亿 was also used in Japan, even if it was not an “official” character.

My (average native Japanese speaker’s…) hunch actually tells me otherwise, but I don’t have and couldn’t find any solid support.


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## kenjoluma

That character was used even before the Chinese Communists Party. It is the same character in So-syotai (let's say it's one of many Chinese "fonts").
And China adopted many characters from So-syotai to simplify their language.


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## Flaminius

Abbreviation 亿 for 億 is definitely a Chinese phenomenon because it is based on the similar pronunciations for 億, 意, 乙 (yì, yì, yǐ).  These characters have different pronunciations in Japanese, mostly due to codal stop consonants that Chinese has lost.

For graphic illustrations, here are two sites about cursive scripts recognised in Japan.  This is from an 18-century compendium and this is from one dated 1937.


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## xiaolijie

nzfauna said:


> This page says that 亿 is 'translingual'.  What does that mean - what other languages is it used in?
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/亿
> 
> Many thanks


I think it means this 亿 (not necessarily in this form) exists in many languages. But this needs qualification: 亿 exists in many languages (outside China: Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc), but only as a loan word from Chinese.


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