Wordify

This code can count to a million in words. It could probably be refactored so it was shorter and could count to any number. If you were patient enough.

The "-b" flag puts "and" in the places a Brit would put it. It's optional but preferred.
I have random stopping points to increase the modest entertainment value of it running.

Can you recursively get wordify up to the quintillions? How should the "-b" flag be handled?

Can you do this in French?

from string import ascii_lowercase as alphabet
from sys import argv

units = [""] + "one two three four five six seven eight nine".split()
teens =  "ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen".split()
tenties = 2 * [""] + "twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty ninety".split() 


def name(number,terminate = True,continued = False,brit=False):
    assert type(number) == int
    assert number > 0 and number < 1001
    if number == 1000: return "one thousand"
    hundreds,residual = divmod(number,100)
    tens,ones = divmod(residual,10)
    result = ""
    if hundreds:
        result += units[hundreds] + " hundred"
    if residual and hundreds:
        result += " "
    if brit and residual and (hundreds or continued):
        result += "and "
    if (tens == 1):
        result += teens[ones] 
        if terminate:
            result += "."
    else:
        if tens:
            result += tenties[tens]
            if ones: result += "-"
        if ones:
            result += units[ones]
        if terminate:
            result += "."
    return result

def wordify(number,brit=False):
    assert type(number) == int
    assert number > 0 and number < 1000000
    thousands,residual = divmod(number,1000)
    result = ""
    if thousands:
        result = name(thousands,False,brit=brit) + " thousand"
        if residual:
            result += " "
            result += name(residual,continued = True,brit=brit)
        else:
            result += "."
    else:
        result = name(number)
    return result

if __name__ == "__main__":

    from time import sleep
    from random import randint

    brit = "-b" in argv
    
    sleeper = 30
    for i in range(1,1000000):
        if i == sleeper:
            sleep(3)
            sleeper += randint(3000,90000)
        print wordify(i,brit=brit)

output:

one.
two.
three.
four.
five.
six.
seven.
eight.
nine.
ten.
eleven.
twelve.
...
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six.
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven.
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight.
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.

That's as far as it goes so far. Go fix it.