Swedish does that as well. miljon, miljard, biljon, biljard.
This is sufficiently confusing to people that every time I see a newspaper article mention something is a biljon of something they have to mention how much it is and remind readers to not confuse it with an American billion (that is only a miljard).
In most contexts when big numbers like those show up though the metric-system comes to the rescue, since things will be referred to as being a mega-something or giga-something etc anyway. That works great until Americans attempt to do it and get the letters wrong or use K instead of k or M instead of m that causes new confusion and then we're back at having to guess what something means depending on what side of the Atlantic it was written.
This is sufficiently confusing to people that every time I see a newspaper article mention something is a biljon of something they have to mention how much it is and remind readers to not confuse it with an American billion (that is only a miljard).
In most contexts when big numbers like those show up though the metric-system comes to the rescue, since things will be referred to as being a mega-something or giga-something etc anyway. That works great until Americans attempt to do it and get the letters wrong or use K instead of k or M instead of m that causes new confusion and then we're back at having to guess what something means depending on what side of the Atlantic it was written.