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MDMAlliance on 11 September 2013
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pr3st00 said:
MDMAlliance said:
pr3st00 said:

You're right (therefore I'm wrong):

http://www.woodwardenglish.com/million-or-millions/

For an unspecified ammount which is still in the millions, we say millions indeed. Similar reason why we say "one million and a half", in this case it's exactly one million (plus half one).


Not sure if you're saying what I think you're saying, but if you want to say an unspecified amount that is less than 2,000,000 and more than 1,000,000, you don't say "millions."  You would say that it's "over 1 million."  

So if the population of a city is 1,350,000, you could say that the population is "over 1 million."   Usually people take that as less than 2 million.  If you say the population is "in the millions," they would think it would be at the very least 2m or more.  Usually people would think like 5m.


That's the case for my native language, Portuguese. Whatever unity you're using should be in accordance to what comes before the comma:

1,9 milhao (or 1,9 million)

and

2,1 milhoes (or 2,1 millions)

What I understood from reading the link I provided is that English works differently.


However the link you gave does not say differently from what I said.  I would say the reason you aren't understanding it is because your native language isn't English.  Mine is, and even though I have not heard someone argue this before, I have never seen someone use "hundreds"/"thousands"/"millions" for anything less than two of that unit ever.  (stealth edit: actually, the only time I have is when they are exaggerating, like it said inthe link.  But usually if they say "there were hundreds," it would usually be significantly less)

I'm 21 years old and I'm a college student now in my 4th year.  I think that qualifies as hearing the language enough to know what is and isn't right with something like this.  It can be a bit confusing, though.  If you don't want to take my word for it, I'll try to find a source that backs my claim.  Though having tried already, it is kind of difficult because no one seems to actually be asking the question.