Reform:
JoT re Mike and Piper re "Base-10"

If the Chinese had the best number nomenclature, and the Indians had the best numeral system, we should put them together. The question becomes, where do you put the commas (or, for Europeans, the spaces). The logical, albeit ugly, answer is that you put a comma everywhere that you'd name a milestone number for the last time. If we'd say (using "wan" to mean "hundred hundred"):
forty-seven hundred twenty-nine wan eighty-seven hundred fifty-three
we'd write it:
4729,87,53

Using the new nomeclature I proposed (and that Chinese numbers use), it would be:
four-ten-seven-hundred-two-ten-nine wan, eight-ten-seven hundred, five-ten, three
so in numeral form it would be:
4729,87,5,3

Since, in English, we use the apostrophe to indicate missing characters, we could change the commas to apostrophes (thus ending the confusion with commas, used as decimal points in other systems):
4729'87'5'3

If you're worried that "four-ten-seven-hundred-two-ten-nine wan" is too hard to follow, it could be that milestone numbers are named by their initials until the last time they're named, thus:
four-tee-seven-hee-two-tee-nine wan, eight-tee-seven hundred, five-ten, three
(See my alphabet reform for why "hee" and "wee" are the initials of "hundred" and "wan," respectively.)

"Wan" won't do as the name for "a hundred hundred" because it sounds too much like "one." What are other Asian words for that number?

—JoT
July 2001