As Easy As 1 2 3

When talking to friends from Asia I have noticed that counting beyond a thousand becomes an issue. Fingers are pulled out and counted upon. But why? That has never made sense. Never made sense until I learned how to count in Asian.

I already posted on how to count with your fingers in Korean and Chinese, but counting larger numbers are more interesting.

In Korean there are two number systems: 1 is from China (Sino-Korean) and the other is pure Korean. 1-10 in Chinese and Sino-Korean are really simliar except 1 and 2 are swapped. Bescides that the Sino-Korean is a lot easier to use and count with. In fact the pure Korean system stops after 99 and by default people change to Sino-Korean at that point. But which system do people use?
1-10 (Korean)
11+ (Korean but sometimes Sino-Korean)
100+ (Sino-Korean)
Telephone numbers (Sino-Korean but sometimes a mix of Korean since #1 and #2 can sound similiar when said fast)

Counting beyond 100 in Sino-Korean (remember, Chinese system) gets interesting as well:

# (English) >Korean<
100 (one hundred) <백 = one hundred>
1,000 (one thousand) <천 = one thousand>
10,000 (ten thousand) <만 = ten thousand>
100,000 (hundred thousand) <십만 = ten ten-thousand>
1,000,000 (million) <백만 = hundred ten-thousand>
10,000,000 (ten million) <천만 = thousand ten-thousand>
100,000,000 (hundred million) <억 = (single word) 100 million>
(sorry it looks so messy; the blog destroyed my formatting)

Seeing an advertisement on the subway that said "300 억," so three hundred billion.

Now it all makes sense, right?