3 ms·

I've been struggling some to describe numerals and Mikey's to my small children, and it often feels like they area backwards. As you describe this I wonder: are

• gumby 8y ago
  In Arabic numbers are written in the same order as in, say, English, Thus Arabic is little-endian. I grew up with the Hundu digits (and the European ones!) which look more like the digits we use here than the actual arabic ones.
  • rleigh 8y ago
    Is the Hindu and English ordering the same? If so, it's gone through two endian changes from India to Europe!
    • improbable22 8y ago
      Yes, everyone writes the tens to the left of the ones on the page. Most of their names (at least in Hindi) are recognisable from enlish/latin/greek. Looks like that's not the case in Arabic, unsurprisingly really... unless 7 = سَبْعَة = sabʿä = sabbath counts, but I suspect we got that from semitic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numbers_in_various_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numbers_in_various_lan...
• civilian 8y ago
  Yes we are! I first had the same thought when I was reading about Galley division: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_division https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_division and then I think I found a website that could switch between english and arabic translations and found a number to compare.