" docenas de miles de millones"

Question

The phrase is: en el cerebro hay docenas de miles de millones de neuronas I'm looking for the best way to express this in English and I'm no mathematician.

I'm thinking for docenas="dozens" I may as well put "tens" as that's more colloquial and the figure doesn't give a precise number.

So I have "tens of thousands of millions". Wouldn't "thousands of millions" be "Billions"? Please forgive my ignorance, it's all phone numbers to me.

Answer 1

"en el cerebro hay docenas de miles de millones de neuronas"

In the brain there are dozens of thousands of millions of neurons.

When you ask google, "How many neurons are in the human brain?" the answer that comes from many sources is "100 billion," which you would say as, "One hundred billion."

Thanks for that. I think the "decenas" "docenas" distinction is important and I have a misprint. So you would use the "billion" then? I think thast's what I'll do. - lagartijaverde, Oct 13, 2010

Answer 2

Birdland, are you sure that it is "docenas"?

I think that it would be more logical to say, in Spanish, "decenas de miles de millones". Docena also exists, of course, but it is not so usual in this context of figures.

Docena = 12, Decena= 10

Decenas de miles de millones, is about 10.000.000.000 and multiples of this amount.

lo mismo dije...no es corriente pero he encontrado la frase tan cual en la web.... - 00494d19, Oct 13, 2010

Answer 3

Hola birdy, en inglés británico se solía decir mil millones, a thousand millon, segúna parece, pero ya se impone cada vez más : one billion

Mira este hilo.

Es más corriente ver: decenas de miles...

Answer 4

Thanks everyone, very helpful. Decenas is "tens" then? That link looks useful. I'm useless with numbers once the zeros are piled on.

So, would it be unusual to say docenas en castellano, y decenas seria mas usual?

If so then I have a misprint, which wouldn't surprise me.

Definitely DEcenas. We're not as fond of counting in twelves as the British are. :-) - Gekkosan, Oct 13, 2010

Answer 5

To complicate matters even more I got this from Heidita's thread

"Es incomprensible, pero fácil a la vez: Un billón: 1.000.000.000.000 One billion: 1.000.000.000 (es decir, tres ceros menos) Como dice aztlaliano, se supone que en inglés del Reino Unido el "billion" es igual que nuestro "billón", pero lo cierto es ya casi todos los medios ingleses aplican el valor norteamericano para no confundir. La revista "The Economist", que de números algo sabe, escribe "billion" con valor de nueve ceros. Saludos.

That's right. The US invented a different kind of billion, which complicates things enormously once you get into that size of number. Something similar happens with "tonne", which is different in the US, the British system, and the metric system! - Gekkosan, Oct 13, 2010