I was a bit unsatisfied by the top answer which mostly seemed to be a reaction to the connotations of the word ‘backwards’ rather than a discussion of the histo

I was a bit unsatisfied by the top answer which mostly seemed to be a reaction to the connotations of the word ‘backwards’ rather than a discussion of the history which was tacked on at the end. I think the answer is that languages didn’t traditionally have base-10 systems of counting words (e.g. in English you see things based on scores with irregular number names below 20 persisting, and you see systems based on the dozen and gross, and money and measuring had other counting systems). When Hindu-Arabic numerals arrived (via Fibonacci et al) and were adopted, languages adapted more towards base-10 systems to match the written numbers, and English ended up with a regular left-to-right system for numbers above 19 and German ended up with irregularities up to, I think, 99 (French and Dutch also have weird systems up to 99 I think). So the fundamental point is that the reason number systems are so similar (and therefore the reason this seemed like a sensible[1] question) is that they were redeveloped based on the new arithmetic system and people don’t really notice the vestiges of the old systems much. [1] I don’t want to say that the question is bad but rather that without the historical context it seems like a question more specific to German than something like “why do adjectives come before the noun in English and after it in French” which ends up with an answer that is roughly general history plus “that’s just how it happened”.