J 891
Posts:
154
Registered:
12/6/04
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Re: Greek Alphebet
Posted:
Nov 12, 2003 2:31 PM
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"Dik T. Winter" <Dik.Winter@cwi.nl> wrote in message news:<Ho8L3K.3t6@cwi.nl>...
> In article <386aaf52.0311111232.626a3906@posting.google.com> j_891@hotmail.com (J 891) writes:
> ...
> > How are numbers written in Hebrew? I remember seeing people writing
> > right to left (so presumably Hebrew or Arabic) but using our numerals
> > and writing them left to right. So they had to jump ahead a bit to
> > write the numbers.
>
> You do not have to jump ahead. You just first write the units, the
> tens next, etc. This is not different from the way we write the
> result of an addition on paper.
Yes, they did not have to jump ahead but they did. I should have
phrased it better and simply said that they did jump ahead. Despite
the change in direction this odd method may have been easier if they
wanted to write numbers that appeared the same as ours. In every
language I know, large numbers are spoken in the order that we
normally write. E.g. 1,234 is spoken is commonly spoken in that
order. Not just in Indo-European languages but many Asian ones as
well. A few languages invert the last two digits. This used to be
common in English but is now rare. It survives in the nursery rhyme:
"Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie". But even when this form
is used, the thousands and hundreds come first.
J
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