Quote:
Originally Posted by Shimpy
I have no idea what 50 rupees means, nor km/h, 340-litre, or especially Rs. 3.5 - 4 lakh.
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The pasted quote is from an Indian source. In spite of my time in India, and the fact that the organization I served with was a very major property owner in India, I have to admit I have to rethink it each time. The Indian numbering system is interesting.
From Wikipedia:
Although based on the decimal system, it is unlike western cultures; after a thousand the next major figure is not a million (thousand x thousand) but a lakh (hundred x thousand) or 1,00,000; after this the next is not a billion (thousand x thousand x thousand)[going by American English definition], but a crore (hundred x hundred x thousand) or 1,00,00,000 in numerical form. Therefore in Indian English, values greater than or equal to hundred thousand Indian rupees are spoken of, written and counted in terms of lakhs (one lakh = hundred thousand), and crores (one crore = ten million).
For example, the amount INR3,25,84,729.25 is read as three crore(s), twenty-five lakh(s), eighty-four thousand, seven hundred and twenty-nine rupees and twenty-five paise. The use of million or billion, as is standard in American or British English, is not common and sometimes cause confusion to the ill informed and can lead to mis-translations and consequential problems.
Of course km/h is simply kilometers per hour. A kilometer is about .6 of a mile in our system.
340 litres? A liter is a bit more than a quart, so that's not too hard to visualize. But of course the metric system is so much more simple than our system of weights and measures. A liter of water weighs a kilo and many things flow from that (a litre translates to about 2.2 pounds in our system). And so forth.
I had a Tata Maruti once upon a time. Tata makes good vehicles; their strength is in larger vehicles. I'm sure we'll all be interested to see whether they actually pull off a successful launch of a compressed air powered vehicle where so many others have failed...........