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Not true. In arabic languages you write text R-L, but numbers are L-R.
by samat 9y ago
Not true. In arabic languages you write text R-L, but numbers are L-R.
- ufo 9y agoArabic numbers are L-R if you have a big-endian mindset, but R-L if you switch to a little-endian mindset :)
- amaccuish 9y agoNo. Arabic numbers are always L-R...
- alaaibrahim 9y agoNot exctly accurate, for the part of the number that is < 100, it will always be R-L, as in 25, would be 5 and twenty in Arabic. Also for the part that is L-R, that is not the rule, as some people still read all the number as R-L (actually in a lot of historical documents that was the case), so the would read 1925 as five and twenty and nine hundred and a thousand. Where is now most people would read it as a thousand, and nine hundred, and five and twenty.
- gumby 9y agoMany R-L languages do the same such as German French, Hindi et al.
- pritambaral 9y agoWait, Hindi is neither a R-L language nor does it switch directions for text and numbers. Source: native Hindi speaker.
- gumby 9y agoYes sorry for too-late-to-edit confusing typo: german Hindi French are all L-R , all big-endian (least significant digit on right) all have numbers which, when spoken, aren’t said in strict digit order.
- hondadriver 9y agoI guess you mean L-R. In Dutch and German 1925 is most commonly read as 'nine teen five and twenty' But 2025 as 'two thousand five and twenty'
- BrandoElFollito 9y agoDo you mean that you read a text from the right to the left, and when you meet a number you jump to is leftmost digit, then read it LR, then jump agzin to its left (where there is a space) and resume reading text?
- ori_b 9y agoYes.
- simias 9y agoIf you think about it in left-to-right languages reading numbers requires backtracking because you have to see how many digits there are to know if you're reading units, thousands, millions, billions... Take 12,345,567 for instance, if you want to read it aloud you first have to go all the way to the end to figure out that there are three groups of numbers, so the first one is million, then thousands, then units. If you were only given a truncated version of the number it's impossible to read it aloud. So in a way the arabic represents number actually makes some sense and it could be argue that we write them backwards. Furthermore IIRC from a discussion with an arabic friend (from the middle east, not sure if it's different in NA) the most formal way of reading numbers aloud is actually backwards (or little endian I guess) compared to the way we do in english. So if I understood correctly for 1,234 you'd say "four and thirty and two hundred and a thousand" or something similar. Don't quote me on that though because I know almost nothing about the arabic language and this is from a discussion I've had many years ago.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gumby 9y agoExactly: you encounter the least significant digit first as you read.