MasterSplinter said:
Actually a billion is not "a thousand millions"(10^9), that is a... hum well in my language is "millardo".
A billion is "a million millions"(10^12) witch is a more logical numerical transition. Only the United States English, Brazilian Portugueze, Turkish and Greek use it. I´m not sure about British English.
Yes, the english language has two scales to use when naming large numbers, one is the short scale that gives a new name to every term 1000 times greater than one million, while the long scale gives a new name to every term 1000000 times greater than one million.
So Short scale:
10^6 = million
10^9 = billion
Long scale:
10^6 = million
10^9 = Originally "1000 millions" but can now also be called milliard
10^12 = billion
Predominately, English speaking nations use the short scale, while other countries uses the long scale.
For more information in the matter, please refer to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales