I just want to remind everyone that Mark Bankston was one of the litigators during Alex Jones' civil suit. And he won that case with a 1.5B$ judgement in favor of the Sandy Hook parents. I suggest everyone get a metric fuckton of popcorn if he brings a case against Musk.
In Swedish we write something like 10 SEK or 10:- (the dash is a substitute when there's no fraction of a Krona, otherwise it would be some like 10:50 (the latter part, "öre", typically written in smaller letters) or 10,50 kr)
It’s funny that you listed pesos, because Spanish adds ¿ before questions, sort of like an opening quotation mark. So the reader knows it’s a question right at the beginning, instead of getting all the way to the end of the sentence. I’d argue that adding the currency symbol before the number informs the reader that the following number will be a currency amount. Potentially handy when you’re dealing with multiple kinds of numbers at the same time.
Not sure why something has to extrapolate to every context you can think of in order to make a lick of sense, especially when talking about language and writing systems, which almost always have exceptions.
Except putting it in front let's you understand what the number is that you're reading before you read it. It's not 1.5B people. It's not 1.5B paper airplanes. You know it's dollars being discussed as you read the number. For understanding, I'm reasonably confident it makes more sense to out it in front.
If it makes more sense to put the unit before the number, then couldn't one argue we should be writing people1.5B or airplanes1.5B? That way we know what it is before we read the number.
Interestingly enough, the yen is written in front when you use the yen symbol that's internationally recognized, as in ¥1000, but locally in Japan they often put the word for yen (円) on price tags instead, and that goes after the number, as in 1000円.
Because the reason why we did it the other way, with the $ in the front was because of checks since checks have gone out of fashion for nearly 20 years now. It makes sense to put the $ sign to the back since you say fifty dollars.