In one of the stack responses they say: > and this is also done in modern spoken Arabic with no strange reversals as in German That is not fully correct. Arab

In one of the stack responses they say: > and this is also done in modern spoken Arabic with no strange reversals as in German That is not fully correct. Arabic numbers are spoken in a similar way to German. For example, 42 is "2 and 40" (إثنان و أربعون in fus7a) It is somewhat natural to read a number like that in Arabic. As you are reading right-to-left you come across a number where the least significant digit comes first. In other words in English if you see 123 you think "one hundred twenty three" as you read left-to-right. That same number is written ١٢٣ (the 3 least significant digit is to far right) and is read "one hundred and three and twenty".