This is the Business English Podcast, episode 139.
Should you say tens of thousands? Numbers to avoid in Business English.
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How's it going, Aubrey? How's everything?
I'm great, Lindsay. How are you? Oh, I'm feeling good today.
Today we're talking about numbers, right?
Which as English teachers, maybe while I speak for myself, it's not my forte.
I know, right? I'm no mathematician, but I have having taught French.
There are some tricky things about teaching numbers in different languages because they don't all work the way numbers work in English, right, Lindsay?
It can be really tricky for sure. I've experienced that as a language learner too.
So we have a student question, right? And we're just going to go ahead and say it right off the bat.
Aubrey, what is the student's question today?
This student asked, why do I never hear tens of millions in English?
And I was able to ask a student about this and we're going to share a couple of things in a few different languages where the number system or specific numbers work so differently than in English that it can be really confusing once you're learning English and expect it to go a certain way, expect it to go like you're used to and it doesn't.
Just like we can't translate directly from a language, we can't make assumptions about how numbers are phrased between our native languages and English, right?
And so this is really going to apply today to the business world for everyone.
You know, this is our Business English podcast.
Guys, make sure you go and hit follow. Find that follow button today so that we can just drop right into your podcast listening queue.
So you don't have to remember to listen.
We'll just show up for you for three days a week.
Right, Aubrey? Yes, absolutely. So be sure to hit follow wherever you find your podcasts.
And for great vocab like today, this is especially important at work in business English.
If you're talking about big contracts, clients, important numbers, you want to make sure that you're clear and accurate.
And so you can't translate directly. You can't expect numbers to work like in your first language.
Oh my God. So let's give our listeners some examples of what we're talking about here.
Yeah. So it can be so different. In French, how do we conceptualize numbers?
Yes. So in French, the numbers are different than in English.
Like after 70, instead of a base 10, it's called where you're counting by tens, it's a base 20.
So to say 70, you say 60, 10. And to say 80, you say four 20s.
So that's really difficult for English learners to conceptualize when they're learning French.
And for French speakers, it's tricky to learn English.
You just can't translate directly. And these numbers can have real life consequences.
Yes, exactly. When we get into the really big numbers, the consequences get even bigger, don't they?
If we're buying a house. So we want to make sure we get this right.
A salary, negotiating a salary. So in Danish, coming from Danish, What do we know from that language?
Yeah, this was fascinating to me. I sort of looked up some anomalies and just very different from English.
In Danish, some multiples of 10 are formed with fractions.
So when they say the number 50, they say half third times 20.
Oh my gosh. And 70 is like three and a half times 20.
So it's so interesting because having, you know, growing up with that language, it would make perfect sense to someone who speaks Danish.
But when you're an English learner or, you know, anyone else learning another language coming to Danish, that's going to be a little confusing.
Yeah, this is one of the hardest things.
I remember in Arabic, we had some of those.
I can't even articulate how it's different or how it's formed right now.
But it is a matter of sitting there. If you're there in a class with your teacher, your teacher says, you know, say 75 in Arabic, you sit there and think.
Right. 60 plus 15, right? That's what it would be in French.
Right, right, right. It's so tough. So this is different from the way that we might learn a word, a vocabulary word, just by... kind of knowing it it's different in the beginning when we start as a total beginner in english so how is it in english that we break down numbers yeah so this um what we're going to focus on today is um sort of the general numbers when we estimate and generalize large numbers and we do this all the time in business english and this is what came up with this student question asking about tens of millions why don't we say tens of millions So in English, numbers are broken down by how many thousands they have.
But for example, in Chinese, it works very differently.
Numbers are based off how many tens of thousands they have.
So not only is our counting our sort of general numbers very strange to someone who speaks Chinese, they will also be very surprised that they won't hear or don't say tens of thousands or tens of millions.
So we're going to go into which terms we use in English to generalize or estimate numbers in English so that you can be sure that at work in business English, you're using the correct terms.
Yeah. And this might be very related to your currency.
I'm not sure. Right. Um, maybe these numbers, the language formed around the currency, like how many bills are we dealing with talking about inflation, things like that.
We don't know, but it's important to get this straight.
So what's the pro tip here, Aubrey? Yeah.
So in English, our pro tip is to avoid saying tens of, right?
When we're talking about small numbers, we would say dozens of instead of tens of, right?
And for large numbers, we will usually say several instead of tens of.
So we're going to give you lots of examples here.
So you see what we mean. And you're probably going to start saying, okay, yeah, that sounds familiar.
I've heard that. And you likely won't hear very often tens of thousands or tens of millions.
We just don't say that very often. I love that.
So let's go into a little bit more detail here, Aubrey.
So number one, when we talk about thousands, tell us more here.
Yeah. So we're going to use thousands whenever we're talking about multiple thousands, but below 100,000.
And using the word dollars when we're talking about money is optional.
So we'll always give you examples with both because you can just say, you know, thousands or thousands of dollars.
Right. For example, we'll say thousands by going with this client.
You could say that. Yep. Or you could say, we'll save thousands of dollars by going with this client.
And dollars is implied, so it's optional.
Yeah. Anytime you have the word save, that's a trigger word for money, right?
So you don't need that dollar. Yeah. Yeah.
And even time, right? You might say, I have spent thousands of hours on this project.
And we wouldn't say tens of thousands of hours, right?
We're just going to keep it more general and just say thousands of hours.
Yeah. Now, I know our listeners probably have heard, though, tens of thousands.
Yeah. right out in the world this cost me like tens of thousands in some way they've heard it yeah yeah it's not like we never say it right it's i feel i feel like i don't hear it often because we're always trying to save time and tens of thousands means the same to me as thousands because we're just talking about sort of a general number we're not getting specific anything below a hundred thousand it means the same to say thousands or tens of thousands.
So why would we add those extra syllables?
So you may hear that it's not grammatically wrong, but we usually will just eliminate it to save time.
Yeah. Let's save time. Let's be succinct and direct.
So let's just eliminate that and just say thousands guys.
So much easier. Or what you might hear instead, we mentioned this a minute ago is several thousand.
I would more likely say, you know, we saved several thousand dollars by going this way instead of we saved tens of thousands of dollars.
I love that. Okay. When it comes to hundreds of thousands, let's get higher, right?
This is just above a hundred thousand. We're going to start saying hundreds of thousands.
Okay. So yeah. So we're, for example, we're hundreds of thousands.
What? Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands away from our goal.
Or you could say we're hundreds of thousands of dollars away from our goal.
Same where the dollars is optional. Or they're hundreds of Thousands of dollars in debt.
Write this down, guys, because it could be a little complicated.
So write it down. What else, Aubrey? Yeah, here's an interesting note that if you do use several instead of like tens of or hundreds of, you would need dollars, right?
You couldn't say there are several hundred thousands in debt.
You need that several hundred thousand dollars in debt, almost as if several replaces an actual number.
Oh, so good to know. Love it. See details online. okay number two the second one we need to know here is millions talking about millions yes and the same rules apply right we'll give you more example sentences here but we are when we say millions we're talking about multiple millions but below a hundred million yeah so for example guys the contract is worth millions right millions of dollars that's assumed Yes, exactly.
And you see how general we stay, right? This is where all we need to know is it's worth millions.
Maybe we're exaggerating here. Maybe this is pretty accurate, but we're just whatever the conversation is, we're not getting into specific numbers.
We're staying general. We're estimating and we'll just say millions for anything below 100 million.
Yes. And the next one, what would be another example?
Yeah, you might say their budget is millions of dollars.
And again, that dollars is optional. You could just say their budget is millions.
Yes. And tens of millions. What do you think?
Yeah. You might hear it every now and then just like tens of thousands.
But again, we usually will just say millions because it means the same thing.
Millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars.
All I'm doing is adding syllables for myself.
So you're not going to hear it very often.
Oh my gosh. Now the numbers are getting really big.
Yes. Numbers we don't deal with every day.
So hundreds of millions. What about that?
Yeah. So you might say the contract is for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Whoa. And it's interesting how they both have to be plural.
Hundreds of millions. Oh, that is interesting.
Hundreds of millions of dollars. That is a lot of money.
Yes, it is. Or for example, their client has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in real estate.
Yes. And you can keep in mind that you can use several for all of these, right?
The contract is for several hundred million dollars.
And if you add several, notice how all of those become singular.
Several hundred million dollars. A hundred million becomes singular.
Maybe we should make a course, Aubrey, on this.
Because I feel like this is something our listeners need the app, right?
They need to listen. They need to see these things written.
Guys, if you want that, let us know. Send me an email to lindsayatallersenglish.com because we are going to be in the business of making new business English courses this fall.
And there's a lot that we could do. But we want to make courses that you guys are looking for.
So could be a candidate. Yes. whenever we have a podcast on here that you guys think i want to know more i want more like this let us know because that would be a great way to build a course that would be really cool okay aubry so now let's get into a role play let's make it real we are accountants oh i could not be i couldn't do it i couldn't do it it's not my personality you'll have to harness your skills of an actress here oh god i'm just not detail oriented enough to be an accountant because i just feel like the numbers are never 100 correct That's going to be really appropriate for this role play because we're discussing an audit we're performing and the numbers are just not adding up.
Here we go. All right. These numbers aren't adding up.
They're off by millions. Oh, wow. Could be worse, I guess.
At least they're not off by hundreds of millions.
Well, true. Let's go through and see where they're off.
It looks like the wrong number was inputted for sales in 2022.
It's off by several hundred thousand. Oh my gosh, that is my nightmare scenario having to do that.
No, never. It really does sound miserable, especially if you're off by this much.
You'd be like, whoa, we have a serious problem here.
What happened? All right. So what we did here, guys, first, I said, these numbers aren't adding up.
And that's a bonus phrase for today. Adding up really good one.
Meaning what, Aubrey? Yeah, it means they don't make sense.
There's something wrong. They don't match what your expectation is.
And here it's kind of a double meaning, right?
Like literally we're adding the numbers.
And they're literally not adding up. That's true because we use it idiomatically for anything.
It would be like your actions are adding up for what I would expect for your behavior.
And then we also use it more literally. These numbers aren't adding up.
It's always fun when you can use a word in a literal and metaphorical sense at the same time.
That's a pro tip. That's so good. 99% fluency, guys.
So they're off by millions. Yeah. And so this is the kind of situation where you're not going to share the specific number.
Imagine if the number is like, you know, 15,987,652.
Like no one has time for you to say that number.
You're going to instead just say millions or several million.
Yes. We stay broad until we have to really get into the details and then we have to find an accountant to do it.
All right, so what did you say after that?
I said, oh, that's terrible, but at least they're not off by hundreds of millions.
And I could again here say several hundred million, but keep in mind that those two words become singular if I use several to replace the number.
That's a really important call out here, Aubrey, right?
They become singular once we say several hundred million.
Guys, listen to this again if everything's not clear, right?
This is the kind of episode you may want to listen to twice.
Yes. What else, Aubrey? My last one here, I did use several and said, it's off by several hundred thousand. means the same thing as saying it's off by hundreds of thousands of dollars oh my gosh so guys for the takeaway today aubrey is make sure you have a great accountant to take care of this for you um that's number one and i'm sure we have many listeners who are accountants and i bet you guys are great at your jobs and they're probably laughing at us because they're like oh you're so easy not be that hard that is so simple and easy right um we need great accountants in this world for sure just I guess the key is just knowing what we do well.
Like how does your brain think? Does it think in terms of numbers or does it think in some other way?
Explore that, right? Give some space for that.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think this like large numbers, terms for estimating numbers is just another way that it's important to remember not to translate directly from your first language because some things like this just don't work.
It's not going to make sense and the numbers will be wrong if you try to translate them directly from a lot of first languages.
And as we said earlier, the stakes are higher, the bigger the numbers get.
You're dealing with signing for a mortgage or doing a deal at work.
We really want to make sure. Yes. We want to make sure we're confident with these numbers.
So let us know, guys, if you're interested in a course on this.
I could see us making a really cool little course on how to read numbers, how to say numbers in English in business.
So good stuff, Aubrey. Thanks for hanging out and creating this episode for us today.
Thanks, Lindsay. I'll see you next time.
All right. Take care. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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