Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

That's fair. As you note by drawing a distinction, modern Arabic and formal/historical Arabic differ in their digit reading order: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-numerals-written-left-to-right...

I don't know if the original Hindu system read from most significant left digit first, but if it did then the historical transmission into Europe may have entailed two flips of numeric endianness.



> I don't know if the original Hindu system read from most significant left digit first

The Sanskrit language (exemplifying the "Hindu system") had the same pattern as English for the teens, i.e:

11: ekadaśa = eka (1) + daśa (10)

12: dvadaśa = dva (2) + daśa (10)

13: tridaśa = tri (3) + daśa (10)

etc ..

In Sanskrit this pattern (least significant non-zero digit spoken first) continues through to larger numbers. so:

20: vimśati

21: ekavimśati

120: vimśati-śatam

1121: ekavimśati-śatam-sahasra

etc.

But it's important to remember that the spoken rendering of numbers in all these languages precedes the written representation by millenia. People have been counting much longer than they have been writing. Of course later ways of speaking the numbers may have been influenced by writing systems, but the spoken rendering of basic smaller numbers tend to be relatively stable over time.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: