-yllion (pronounced /aɪljən/)[1] is a proposal from Donald Knuth for the terminology and symbols of an alternate decimal superbase[clarification needed] system.
In addition to providing an extended range, -yllion also dodges the long and short scale ambiguity of -illion.
Knuth's digit grouping is exponential instead of linear; each division doubles the number of digits handled, whereas the familiar system only adds three or six more.
Knuth continues borrowing the traditional names changing "illion" to "yllion" on each one.
Same numerals are used in the Ancient Greek numeral system, and also the Chinese "short scale" (new number name every power of 10 after 1000 (or 103+n)), "myriad scale" (new number name every 104n), and "mid scale" (new number name every 108n).
Today these Chinese numerals are still in use, but are used in their "myriad scale" values, which is also used in Japanese and in Korean.
In order to construct names of the form n-yllion for large values of n, Knuth appends the prefix "latin-" to the name of n without spaces and uses that as the prefix for n. For example, the number "latintwohundredyllion" corresponds to n = 200, and hence to the number
To refer to small quantities with this system, the suffix -th is used.
Knuth's system wouldn't be implemented well in Polish due to some numerals having the -ylion suffix in basic forms due to Polish-language rules, which change the syllables -ti-, -ri-, -ci- into -ty-, -ry-, -cy- in adapted loanwoards, present in all "-illions" above a billion (e.g. trylion as trillion, kwadrylion as quadrillion, kwintylion as quintillion etc; nonilion as nonnillion is the only exception, but also not always[2]), causing ambiguity for numbers above 1032-1.