So did I. Really good to see a good content creator right from the start. With such an interesting topic as linguistics. Math teacher here, and fascinated with those linguistic features in math and other forms of comunication.
As a native Hebrew speaker myself, this video is thought provoking but ultimately wrong in the case of Hebrew IMO. Personally, when reading Hebrew I *do* actually read numbers from left to right, meaning I actually move my eyes to the left of the number and scan to the right (at least for 3+ digit numbers). While you have an interesting point about English and German originally not matching the order in which numbers are written 100% of the way, there's a difference between the spoken language swapping two adjacent place values, and the spoken language having the complete reverse order of all place values. FWIW in Hebrew we type numbers from left to right, and personally that's order I use when writing them by hand as well. Equations also get written from left to right. For contrast, when using the Hebrew numeral system, we also start by first writing larger place values and finish with smaller ones... but here we go from right to left since Hebrew numerals are just repurposed Hebrew letters. The point about calendars is an interesting one. There are actually both left-to-right and right-to-left calendars in Israel, although I think left-to-right is more common. I think this is due to heavy Western influence in Israel: 50% of Jewish Israelis are descended from European Jews, and until 1948 the whole area was controlled and administered by Britain. Things like graphs are also inconsistent - usually in scientific settings the X-axis would increase from left to right since researchers often publish in English and are used to that orientation, but I often come across graphs made in more everyday contexts where the X-axis increases from right to left. Back to numbers, though: either in English or Hebrew, can people read *large* numbers purely from left to right? For really big numbers like 920,000,000,000, I need two passes: one to count the commas and figure out what the first place value is, and another to actually read the number in order. I think I do the first pass right-to-left, counting up the place values in my head (thousand, million, billion) and then the second pass left-to-right, to actually read the number. Sorry if this is a bit of a long comment, haha. Your videos are pretty cool so far, here's hoping your channel continues to grow!
Old arabs used to read units-tens-hundreds-thousands-millions but today's Arabs read millions-thousands-hundreds-units-tens. So when reading it's like: جبت 127 سرموكة يكفن؟؟ ا←← {→→} ←←←←←
would be cool if hebrew had a dedicated number numeral set that went right to left (kinda like the gematria system but with zero so it doesn't make a mess though that systems really isn't that bad)
All the Germanic languages use that, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven(one left), twelve(two left), thirteen(three ten) ... twenty(two ten) Reason for why it's eleven and twelve, is because you counted to ten and have 1/2 left over, and then it's 3+10 all the way up twenty which is 2×10, hundred is interesting as a number as well, as it's also derived from the number 10, and this is really old, dkmt is ten and dkmtom is hundred, gehslom is the origin of Mille but the origin of Thousand is unknown, and if you wonder how dkmtom could become hundred, well, you drop the d, then if you're not Celtic you drop the m, kmto, and then you have slight consonant shifts and voila you get Proto-Germanic Hunda, and then it's left to history.
Altho the numbers are usually read from largest to smallest in megilat ester and probably some other texts its the other way around, but this might be due to persian influence or whatever
@@austin-ee4tp well... Technically you can add a geresh to make it a thousand, like in ה׳תשפ״ב so its sort of possibly able to function as three zeros.
This is what computer scientists know as “little-endian” versus “big-endian” meaning the difference between writing (or storing) the least-significant digit first or last. The term comes from Gulliver’s travels, where Lilliput is at war with their neighbour on whether to eat an egg starting form the big (round) end or the small (pointy) end.
In computing, where modular arithmetic is more important, and digits are usually represented by indices with the least significant one being 0, little endian makes the most sense if you ask me. When working in decimal, generally I care more about rounding an approximate answer, so starting with the largest digit seems more fitting in that case. They're ultimately equally arbitrary in both cases though.
@@angeldude101 "In computing [...] little endian makes the most sense if you ask me." I agree. However, it seems big-endian architecture is more common.
@@seneca983 where? I think it’s more conventional in networking to use big endian numbers, but it seems currently used ISAs are typically little endian (x64, RISC V) or mixed endian (AArch64)
I'm a native arab and have studied historical reading methods, and one of the most suprising things is that some, not all, people read numbers RTL in a manner similar to hebrew. for example: 23,456 would be read: ستة وخمسون وأربع مائة وثلاثة وعشرون ألف (sitah wa 'khamsoon wa arba' mi'ah wa thalathata wa 'ishroona 'alf). as in: six and fifty and four hundred and, three and twenty thousand while normally being read: ثلاثة وعشرون ألف وأربع مائة وستة وخمسون (thalathata wa 'ishroona alf, wa arba' mi'ah wa sitah wa 'khamsoon) as in: three and twenty thousand, and four hundred and six and fifty.
What are the odds that the reason german and some other European languages run the order of numbers under 100 right to left in that same way, like 1 and twenty, is because the numeral system came to europe through the arabian language? Only exception being the early tens, that have their own words, outside the general scheme, german gets to 12, which is also the end of the historically not uncommon duodecimal number system. Now that I think about it, latin languages, that I know the numbers for, go up to 15 before switching to 10 and 6. I wonder if it has to do with the latin system using combinations of 5 and 10s in their old number system? It is also curious that the order is reversed in contrast to germanic languages, like dutch, english and german. I wonder how it looks for slavic languages.
Why can't we just do this way, the digits will come at the left! So the number four hundred and thirty two will be 234 in Arabic script, you won't have to read it like two thirty four hundred but the usual way plus simplified writing, nobody mentioned this weirdly
I have just one minor pet peeve with this. There is no reason to apologize for being curious and "wrong". That's how we learn a lot of the time, we ask questions about things that feel weird to us, and then the answer hopefully expands our horizon.
yep, felt the same way while watching another video of his. it's great content! I just think it's counterproductive to label curiosity or mistakes as terrible, they're part of the learning process
As a native hebrew speaker I thought I'd add a bit about the directionality of numbers in hebrew. When typing both letters and numbers on a phone or computer, the direction will change depending on what you're typing, same as it does when adding English text to a hebrew message and vice versa. Although in some cases (like starting a message with numbers/English text and continuing mostly in hebrew) the direction will be kinda bad. Another interesting thing is that in a work setting some people prefer their excel sheets to be LTR and some like it RTL. Seems like the better you are in English more likely you'll want it LTR, even if you never worked with spreadsheets in English. Also, in my work I sometimes use an old software that has numbers written from right to left, because when they adapted it to hebrew they couldn't have an exception for numbers. Although it's annoying at first, you quickly get used to it and it's no different from reading numbers normally (although switching between the two systems can be a but puzzling sometimes)
Question: do native Hebrew speakers combine English and Hebrew words when typing? It would make a lot of sense since it's a very common thing in my language, but it sounds like a hassle to switch from reading RTL to LTR and back to RTL again in the same sentance.
@@8is yeah we do that all the time. Somid it's for only one word or a very common word you might just write the word in the hebrew script, but a lot of times you do write the word in English. It's not really annoying to change direction, the annoying thing is dealing with the apps that sometimes don't formar the text properly
There is this one numbering system in Hebrew that's actually quite relevant if you mention calendars since it's very often used in the Hebrew calendar, which is basically a tally system where every letter is assigned a number, and 986 would be תתקפו (which happens to also be the word "attack" just by chance)
In Hebrew (and also in Arabic) we read numbers from left to right just like you! We just switch directions when there are numbers. It’s not complicated at all because we’re used to it. Also remember, kids begin learning basic math around the same time they begin learning how to read, which means they are used to both systems (Hebrew and numbers). Love your channel btw xoxo.
In Arabic, we can read numbers from left to right (common) or from right to left (uncommon). but for some reason reading them from right to left in Arabic is harder. (I think because we don't use to read them like that). 9 8 6: this number can be read in Arabic. 1/ Six and Eighty and Nine hundred 2/ Nine hundred and Six and Eighty. (yes, Six before Eight )
Ah, so you mean that the way you *say* the numbers is reversible, but the value of the number is the same regardless. That's a fascinating consequence of importing Hindu numbers into Baghdad centuries ago!
Try Tom Scott's Language Files th-cam.com/video/dUnGvH8fUUc/w-d-xo.html Not to deduct anything from the amazing work done here, Tom Scott is just very good as well if not better.
Hebrew does have a solution to right it "correctly" and it was actually seen in the calendar. The system of gematria uses Hebrew letters in place of numbers, corresponding to their place (for example a=1, t=20, and ta=21) and it's still used in Hebrew calendars and phrases to this day, as seen in the calendar you showed
In English we read text from left to right, but if we encounter a couple of logographs such as $5, we instantly switch to reading right-to-left without thinking twice.
as a Hebrew speaker learning math, We also write equations from left to right, imagine taking a math exam in Hebrew! when I write an equation in the middle of a sentence I need to calculate how long the equation will be before writing it, start to write where I think the equation will end, and when it is longer I akwardly need to lead the equation into the next line, which looks horrible (and when it is shorter it also looks horrible). Why didn't we just adopt the arabic way of writing equations 😭😭(yes, they can write equations from right to left)
The most significant difference in numbers around the world is how we split them. Most of Europe uses 3,3,3 split because they say the numbers that way, in India it's a 2,2,2,3 split, same as brahmi script. This aspect is usually consistent with how you say the numbers in any place.
weirdly enough , we Arabs usually say numbers like Germans like 235 we say "two hundred five and thirty" , this wasn't the case decades ago , we were saying something like "five and thirty and two hundred " so yeah we were reading digits from right to left but now we read them like German people do , Odd I know
@@king_of_noobs1790 Tf? ١٢٣ in Arabic is مئة و ثلاثة و عشرون. Literally one hundred and three and twenty. In olden times they said it ثلاثة و عشرون و مئة, literally three and twenty and one hundred. So yeah he is 100% correct.
"Reading and inputting telephone numbers is unnecessarily complicated in Arabic." No, it's not. The fact that numbers go the opposite way never caused a problem for me or anyone I know. I've never heard anyone complaining about it or even bringing it up.
A few points I'd like to make as a native Hebrew speaker currently learning Arabic: 1) Both in Arabic and in Old Hebrew(s), we say the tens before the singular units, so 1496 would be one thousand-four hundred-six-and ninty. That being said, in ancient Hebrew (the stuff in the bible) a lot of the time the numbers are written "opposite", especially in ages. That's why when Abraham dies for example, it is said he lived חמש ושבעים ומאה שנה - five and seventy and one hundred years. 2) I would like to point out that for the longest time, the way to write numbers in Hebrew was using letters. א-1 ב-2 ג-3 and so on, and by י-10 you switch to tens. It's called gematria and it's a really interesting topic. The ancient Greeks also used this system with their alphabet. 3) The last thing I'd like to point out is that the Hebrew calendar isn't "supposed" to have numbers on it. The only number that is "supposed" to be on it is the number of the day in the month, written in Gematria most of the time. (the thing mentioned in the second point.) [I say "supposed" because there isn't a regulation of it or whatever. The hours are optional]
For programmers, there's a concept called "endianness" to keep us guessing what order numbers are stored in. Some architectures want the most significant byte first. Others want the least significant byte first. Protocols and file formats all need to agree, so they may or may not match the architecture's native endianness. Some architectures, protocols, and formats support either way, and have a method to specify which is being used. Overall, it's a huge hassle.
Hi, When we arab-script writers want to write a text combined of strings and numbers (or mathematical equations) things get harder and It need to do some pre calculations and predictions about how much spacing do we need to begin writing the math/numbers. Like in this Persian text (written in Arabic alphabet) below: جهت محاسبه نیرو جرم را در شتاب ضرب میکنیم که 20=10*2 میشود بنابراین …. As you see to write 2 times 10 equals 20 we need to begin from left to write. I remember how much spaghetti notes I wrote in school.
To me when I see numbers in a Hebrew text it's just like seeing an English word in a Hebrew text. I remember finding it really dumb when the Academy of the Hebrew Language decided that the proper way to write range of numbers in a Hebrew context is right to left(as in, 7 to 9 as 9-7) precisely because of this.
Israeli here. I remember being taught that letters are written this way and numbers this way, and that's just how it is. What did you think when you were taught that English is written left to right? That's just how it is. As a little kid I thought, "well, those numbers come from the English speaking world, we borrowed the numerals from them, naturally they decide which way to write it, obviously they write it like they write their letters and we have to adapt." The part at the end where he says it's stupid and his friend says "who cares?" Is accurate. Why does English have these useless gh's in words like night or light? Most people don't know the reason, and they don't care. As a kid you simply think that's just the way it is, the adults know better than me. As you grow up you become attached to it.
There is a pretty big advantage to saying numbers with the largest first, the reason is that it gives you order of magnitude immediately which can be extreemly important, and also gives context upon the first number instad of needing the entire number to be spoken first, eg 8 thousand, and fifty five as opposed to five and fifty and 8 thousand. When dealing with small numbers this doesn't matter much, such as fifty-five or five and fifty, but as you get to larger numbers this becomes quite problematic.
Except there's no way to tell what the first digits represents when reading left to right before you've read the whole number and have (unconsciously or consciously) counted the number of digits; at least for numbers with more than about 5 digits (if it's formatted nicely with thousands separators; it's easier to count quickly, but you still need to count the groups of digits before you know if the first digit is millions or 100 thousands. If we read it from smallest to largest (and that was how we pronounced it) we could just start reading and increase the digit value as we read... Of course since we don't have separate words for each digit between 1000 and 1 000 000 we still have to jump back and forth no matter what order we read it...
@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug maybe i am superhuman, or maybe it's just something acquired by being an engineering student, but i unconsciously count the order on higher numbers w/out a problem, even with no comma separators, it just occurs naturally to me that 37474748 is thirty-seven million and something, like i would read a word but i get the reply, it's maybe more difficult for the man that reads out loud the number but it's easier for the man that hears it said out loud, and it tells you what's usually the most important part of the number how many unread emails? *six hundre*- ah fuck Note: of course it isn't perfect because you can then continue with -hundred million… and then you would get the more important information that there is an error with the email client but that's testament to the weird system that resers only every group of three digits
Yeah but imagine how good it would be if every number had a suspenseful reveal! European system starts strong but by the half way point of a long number everyone wants to quit and go home
@@JSBax true! big-endian notation is very good for news where you start with what's most important, but not good at all for the suspenseful delivery of a more dramatic style maybe we should adopt both styles as common and have a convention like saying nine and eighty and four hundreds, maybe also write the digits backwards when using the little-endian style
In Hebrew, we have our own counting system based on our letters, like in latin so 'חי is equal to 18 and it is read right to left. We just adopted the more widely used system.
But since phone numbers are just sequences of numbers, they would absolutely get reversed in Arabic. Think about it for a second: if they were writing a locker combination 10-20-30, they would not write that as 10-20-30. Interestingly I saw your exact original mistake in a Nativlang video, where he hilariously claimed that Arabic numerals were out of place in a right-to-left script.
Ah, the joy when you think the video is over, and want to write a slightly disappointed comment to correct the author, and then you realize the video, in fact isn't over, and the author is correcting his own mistake.
(1:20) Imagine if people could realise the same about date formats; it's not about which order you say it in, as long a everyone writes the same way. With a 4 digit year, writing 31/12/2022 and 2022-12-31 are both perfectly unambiguous.
The issue with date formats is not DD.MM.YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD, the issue is the silly American format (MM/DD/YYYY) that causes all the issues. And for some reason they (their responsibility for using the non-standard format) refuse to use letters for the month, to make it disambiguous (4 May 2022 or May 4 2022 are both fine, but 04.05.2022 and 05.04.2022 are confusing).
@@chingizzhylkybayev8575 What else can 2022-05-10 mean? If I see a best before date written as 10.05.2022, I can be sure it's out of date. As long as it's a 4 digit year it works here.
one word: standardized I dont think you're dead wrong here, the smallest to largest reading is what my mind immediately went to when learning this fact. It absolutely feels better, that's how you add, subtract and multiply, after all and I know I was taught to read numbers 6 ones, 8 tens and 9 hundreds. But the point isn't that one language or the other wasn't bothered to swap it because it still makes logical sense anyway, it's that when you copy an entire system from someplace else, it's not the same as a word, or language structure, the english one and the spanish uno/a, or japanese 十 and french dix are perfect synonyms of each other, and when using the same script to refer to them in their respective languages, it would only cause headaches to try and tell whether someone was trying to say they wanted 15 cloves of garlic or if they wrote 51 in a misguided attempt to make it more comprehensible to you.
The numerals we use, aren't Arabic numerals. They are *West* Arabic numerals. The numerals that Arabic people use, which look significantly different, are *East* Arabic numerals. The way that people in the Arab world wrote numerals, grew to be different between the Western parts, and the Eastern parts. Our numbers come from the Western ones (though Arab-conquered Spain), and the ones used in the Middle East, come from the Eastern variants being standardized there.
The thing is, the Hindu-Arabic numeral system isn't native to Hebrew. Historically we (as well as the Greeks, by the way!) used letters and gave each letter a value (a system called Gimatriya), constructing numbers either that way or by simply writing them out. So the current year of the Jewish calendar is written ה׳תשפ״ב, which when you assign the values is (5) 400+300+80+2, which translates to 5782. That would be a bit like writing the year 1992 as A/zsrb, or considering the letters g, j, v, w, didn't exist in Latin, A/zzxtb.
I want to say that in Sanskrit (written in a brahmi script), numbers are actually read right-to-left, unlike other indian languages, e.g. 615 (६१५) = पञ्चदश pañcadaśa (five-ten/fifteen) अधिक adhika (more) षट्शत ṣaṭśata (six-hundred) Fun fact: Sanskrit was also written at some point in history in Khroshthi script (right-to-left) which was sister script of Brahmi, used in west Pakisthan and Afghanisthan!
There's also a mathematical problem associated with starting with smallest first. It's that many real numbers don't even have a "least significant digit" because they have an infinite decimal expansion. But every real number, except for 0, will always have a most significant digit.
i think everyone mostly kept the consistency of left to right numbers because numbers are meant to be accurate data and so, even the format of writing and reading is kept left to right as started by brahmic scripts in india that invented the hindu-arabic numerals
It makes more sense to read the "higher" number first. If you're in a hurry or are communicating through a medium which has errors such as talking on the phone while going in a tunnel, hearing the 900 part of the number may be more important than the 6 or the 80. If you read from right to left then you should flip the numbers too.
Teacher's job isn't to limit your knowledge. Please research the studies on bullying - it would seem that bullies have better outcomes in life so that's why it perpetuates.
In Biblical Hebrew numbers where pronounced increasingly (for example, seven and twenty and a hundred (שֶׁ֛בַע וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים וּמֵאָ֖ה, Esther 1:1)), that’s why they are written in an increasing order of digits in Hebrew. I can only guess it was the same in Arabic and other Semitic languages. I find it similar to mathematicians who usually write polynomials in an increasing (to the right) order of powers of x (i.e. 1+x+x^2/2+x^3/6+…). In both cases, the series (of digits or monomials) can extend indefinitely in the direction of writing. For numbers, by infinitely many 0s (except p-addic). For polynomials, by higher powers of x. That means that LTR languages write numbers in reverse.
1:40 "These are the Arabic numerals." We call them Arabic because the came to Europe through Arabs but they originate in India. (EDIT: Oops, commented too soon. You talked about this later in the video.)
I was juuuust about to comment until about the 2 minute mark. I was *going* to say, "The order of a number is really important for things like sorting lists of numbers (making it left-to-right means you sort on the left first, then the right, then so on). Not all orderings are equivalent. Some are very much better, even if you speak the number differently." But then, you said a lot of that in the 2nd half anyway. You got me.
As someone who had these linguistical struggles in Arabic, here are some notes: A. Numbers in Arabic are actually read backward from writing all the time. So are phone numbers. Also, we also have the quirk of reading the ones digit before the tens digit. To us, it's only a bother as far as knowing which way to read, say, an equation. B. I believe programs that are made to support digital Arabic typography are specifically made to flip any number that is written. Rather, you write numbers left-to-right, then the space character brings you to the left of the number. This can have weird effects, especially if you're experimenting with multiple scripts on one line. Having just tried it on my phone, the cursor remains to the left, but the numbers are generated to the right. Adding letters, however, acts as a separator, not changing the order of the digits before or after, but preventing mergers across the letter itself. In short, a letter acts like a space. Commas and spaces (by the way, commas are inverted) are moved to the rightmost spot, but only if you type a digit both before and after. That is the weirdest behaviour of all, to me.
I'm fairly sure this has been pointed out somewhere here, but the number at 1:12 isn't Neunhundertsechundachzig (which would be 986) but Neunhundertachtungsechzig (so nine hundred eight and sixty).
At elementary school in Israel they just teach the simple fact that you read and write numbers from left to right, the opposite of text, and that's just how it is. It'll be absurd for me as a native Hebrew speaker to read or treat numbers like I do Hebrew words, it'll make math impossible. when we solve a problem in math we always do it left to right, phone numbers are the same, and even a single digit on a bus or the like would be placed at the leftmost side of the sign. In general, math is practically a language of it's own, one which goes from the left, to the right, no matter the native language of the person using it.
I hope although you retracted your apologie you are still friends with your friend :) Also really interesting video thanks for giving a little more background information on the numbersystem we all just use everyday without questioning it. :)
I hella enjoy your videos I wish there were more longer form content with deeper dives into their subjects as youtube autoplay always seems to lead me somewhere else to stuff I dont have any interest in. it blows to be drawn away from high quality linguistics content, especially when the content was about the length of a cable tv ad break
It is so annoying also because of rtl and ltr input when typing can mess things up as well as the fact that I have seen quite a few street sign errors caused by it
as a hebrew speaker, i still write numbers LtR even though the rest of the hebrew is RtL, but i guess that's also because we start from the larger units when reading out a number
Hebrew and Arabic are different with numbers, even though they write them in the same direction, in spoken language they differ - Arabic speakers start from the least significant digit, Hebrew (like in English) start from the most significant digit. So your initial attempt at an explanation would make sense for Arabic, but not for Hebrew.
Malagasy can read numbers from LTR or RTL. LTR is mainly used for telling the price of goods whereas RTL is used for most other cases. 986 can be read as: => 9 hundred and 8 ten and 6 unit (LTR) => 6 unit and 8 ten and 9 hundred (RTL) RTL is easier to use for us because Malagasy was written in Arabic-based alphabet (RTL) before it slowly changed to Latin alphabet when the Christians arrived in the country.
You could go on with date formats. There are two logical ways: Year-month-day and day-month-year, and then there is the equivalent to neunhundertsechsundachtzig, Month-day-year. Or address formats. Most postal systems nowadays begin by the name, the street address (whether the number goes before or after the street name varies by country), the city and zip code (again that code can go before, after or under the name of the town) and in the last line, the country. But some do it the different way, starting with the largest unit and going to the smallest. Which would make sense if you look how postal service is organized (send a letter to a city's central post office and let them sort out the details there). The postal services in most countries read the address bottom-up, which is against the usual reading direction. And old German postal addresses were the equivalent to neunhundertsechsundachtzig again (Hubert Meier, Bonn, Hauptstraße 46) before things were standardized the way they are now, I guess with the introduction of zip codes.
There are Arabic and Hebrew numbers written in the Arabic and Hebrew scripts, and those were written right to left (largest to smallest), but the Hindu-Arabic numerals took over, and they're now written left to right (largest to smallest).
I'd argue that there is a "best" way to write down/read numbers, and that's in the direction your writing is normally read. Consider this: you are reading a text containing a long number. The first digit you see is the highest power of 10 (or whatever cursed base you're using), therefore giving you the most "important" piece of information right at the beginning. When you're hearing a number, it's the same: you first hear "two million ...", which gives you the rough idea of the number, then the lower digits will follow, which you might not even care about. Unless you're doing some kind of modular arithmetic, you'll always care about the size of the number, rather than what is the last digit.
Our numerals are Indian in origin, who also (generally) read left to right. Arabic actually has its own numeral system, though they mostly adopted the Indian system, and we adopted it from them
Persian is an interesting example. Because of the Arabic script, words are right to left, and numbers are left to right (going down orders of magnitude). This makes sense for Arabic and hebrew where they literally say numbers from right to left by increasing orders of magnitude, but in persian, numbers are said like all the other indoeuropean languages, decreasing orders of magnitude (100 --> 10 --> 1) so Persian's truly makes no sense.
From what I read in these comments, Arabic can actually read numbers both in increasing and decreasing orders of magnitude, and that decreasing order like in Persian is more commonly used (although they switch the single and tens digits around, so 986 becomes "nine hundred six eighty")
Bramic scripts do read left to right, but the Sanskrit number system, which was the basis for the place-value Hindu-Arabic numerals, actually is backward relative to English as you mentioned English used to be. Units were read first, then tens, hundreds, etc. So in old manuscripts 986 would be written as 689 because you say it as षडषीत्यधिकनवशतम् (six-eighty-plus-nine-hundred). The annoying thing is that in every modern printing of a Sanskrit text I've seen they prefer the Western order, I guess to avoid confusion since people are used to larger numbers being first. So when you see a number in Sanskrit you have to skip to the end, read it backward, and then go to the end again to keep reading. I wish they would stop doing this and just accept that Sanskrit's number system is different and write the digits in the traditional order.
No, I don't agree with it, as a Indian and Hindu. Now, all Indo-aryan languages do not have the same system of pronounciation as Sanskrit( some do, some don't, an example for the latter is my native tongue Odia), so 986 would be read as below- Nawsahaw-Chhaya-awsi( literally 9 hundred+ 6+80), but we write it the western way, not the ancient Sanskrit way, for uniformity with the western world and no inconveniences. Plus, Dravidian languages have their own number system( 1-onru/okati, 2-rendu, 3-moodu, 4-Naalu etc) and they follow vigesimal/base 20 system. That being said, we still have some inconveniences while reading our ancient texts, since they wrote numbers just the Sanskrit way, even some 2-3 centuries earlier.
We don't prefer the Western way. Pronouncing the numbers in Sanskrit maybe different, but in most Indian languages, we pronounce the numbers the way we write. For example, in my mother-tongue Telugu, we say 968 as *Thommidhi vandhala aravai enimidhi* [Nine hundred sixty eight]. Just like how we write it. But, some languages readit differently, like Hindi, In Hindi we pronounce 968 as *Nau saw adsat* [Nine hundred eight sixty], but still Hindi speakers write numbers like other Indians do. Maybe the Indian numeral system is made to represent numbers from left to right {in order}, just like how we write our languages.
0:56 looks like the opposite way of how USA writes dates Also, computers usually store & operate on numbers from the least to the most significant byte, but usually transfer from the most to the least significant one
It seems like a sensible explanation, that the right-to-lefters read numbers from the smallest digit to the largest, but one piece of evidence that it isn't true is Arabic telephone numbers, on eg business letters. The numbers are written the same way, ie left to right, as the Western numerals version. And of course you can only type them into a phone one way, beginning with the leftmost digit and carrying on to the right.
I do have to say, reading from the smallest to biggest is superior because its always annoying to have to count the zeros when it comes to numbers above onehundred thousand 100000
As a native Hebrew speaker, it's not stupid. In fact, who said that everything must be written and read in the same direction anyways?? It wasn't ever hard for me at any point. Love your videos btw.
We do write the numbers "wrong" . when I write in a notebook, i need in the middle of a sentence to make space for the perceived length of the number before i write it down. really annoying, especially often when im wrong and need to scratch over or write the End numbers between the line making a mess.....
Damn, you jumped 4k subs in one day LOL. I also have a question or something at 2:43 the tree shows proto-sinaitic > Phoenician> latin> 5 other language derivatives. How does Latin make it's way into Anglo english?? Since latin is the base for Hebrew and Arabic... how does that relate to english? I ask because I'm confused because how does Hebrew and Arabic have a completely different writing appearance. What latin base does hebrew and arabic use? Why the heck does anglo english use latin for a base?? (I understand anglo english pulls from germanic, french and latin among others... but I'm curious about this latin root). P.s. this is not my area of study. I know I've probably used the wrong words. I'm dyslexic and I used the understand of root words to better spell or digest english. So, because of my dilemma of poor spelling I'm always interested in languages and their roots/creation.
The chart is about writing systems, not languages. The modern Hebrew script is from Phoenician via Aramaic; ancient (paleo)Hebrew is from Phoenician directly (or, better, is one example of a Canaanite script, as is Phoenician). Greek was separately borrowed from Phoenician traders. The Etruscans got their alphabet from the Greeks and the Romans got it from the Etruscans.
There are at least two native African right-to-left alphabets that already fixed this issue. In the N'ko and Adlam scripts have their own numbers which are written in the same direction of the letters and start with the biggest digit
Actually there's a case to be made that reading numbers right to left is much more natural. Reading fx. 624 in left to right we get the values as 600 + 20 + 4, but in order to know what magnitude the first digit is we have to scan the entire number before we can begin this process. For small numbers and for base 10 this isn't really a problem but anyone who has worked with binary numbers know how annoying it can be; I often switch direction so if i have to read 1001010 i read right to left because i can't immediately see what power of 2 the first digit should be, so i read the other direction: 0*1 + 1*2 + 0*2² + 1*2³ + 0*2⁴ + 0*2⁵ + 1*2⁶.
if you read a number from the biggest value to the smallest you state the most significant figures first. I think thats an inherently better quality to organizing numbers that way
Well, something that can be agreed upon most definitely is that the practice of swapping the 1s and 10s as we do in German is dumb as hell. Every time I have to say 98 or 89 I'm confused as to which of the ones I said. And I was born in 98... The number comes into my head as "9" "8", and I have to consciously swap them around to get "achtundneunzig" (i.e. "eight and ninety"), and sometimes I accidentally double swap, and end up saying "neunundachtzig" (i.e. "nine and eighty"). It's not so much a problem for smaller numbers, since they are just kinda burned into my head, like "21" is simply "einundzwanzig" (i.e. "one and twenty") directly as a unit. But with bigger numbers, it's really annoying, especially when there are also 100s/1000s/etc. involved, which we read left to right as normal.
In Hebrew, when you write that something happens between two hours, you write the numbers normally LTR but the sentence RTL and also the hours in the same natural direction as you read it. השיעור יתקיים בשעות 10:00-12:00
Archaic Arabic used to read numbers as follows: e.g. 1950 FIFTY plus NINE-HUNDRED & ONE THOUSAND. خمسين وتسعمائة وألف, but the direction of placing the digits did not change, so numerically it remained 1950.
Honestly, I've always found smallest to largest digit to be the more sensible direction, especially given that there is always a ones digit but not always any of the higher-order ones (ignoring decimals and weird ways of writing them like .5). I also thought this was an artifact of us getting the numbers from the Arabs until I learned more about it.
Interestingly, Chinese, Japanese and Korean changed their direction from vertical or right-to-left to left-to-right because they humoured this numbering system.
Well… a lot of Japanese novels, etc are still written vertically top-to-bottom right-to-left, and printed newspapers in Japan mix that style freely with horizontal l-to-r… (yes, when horizontal it used to be right-to-left at one point).
@@petermsiegel573 Yes. Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan also keep the old vertical direction but China and Korea almost totally transform and only use at manga and book back.
In Czech you can switch between saying "twentythree" or "three and twenty" but because i don't speak the language regularly, i dont know which one is used more commonly maybe a český bratr could help me out
You have consistently enjoyable content, I am subscribing.
Me too
Me too
So did I. Really good to see a good content creator right from the start. With such an interesting topic as linguistics.
Math teacher here, and fascinated with those linguistic features in math and other forms of comunication.
Same here!
hard agree
As a native Hebrew speaker myself, this video is thought provoking but ultimately wrong in the case of Hebrew IMO. Personally, when reading Hebrew I *do* actually read numbers from left to right, meaning I actually move my eyes to the left of the number and scan to the right (at least for 3+ digit numbers). While you have an interesting point about English and German originally not matching the order in which numbers are written 100% of the way, there's a difference between the spoken language swapping two adjacent place values, and the spoken language having the complete reverse order of all place values. FWIW in Hebrew we type numbers from left to right, and personally that's order I use when writing them by hand as well. Equations also get written from left to right. For contrast, when using the Hebrew numeral system, we also start by first writing larger place values and finish with smaller ones... but here we go from right to left since Hebrew numerals are just repurposed Hebrew letters.
The point about calendars is an interesting one. There are actually both left-to-right and right-to-left calendars in Israel, although I think left-to-right is more common. I think this is due to heavy Western influence in Israel: 50% of Jewish Israelis are descended from European Jews, and until 1948 the whole area was controlled and administered by Britain. Things like graphs are also inconsistent - usually in scientific settings the X-axis would increase from left to right since researchers often publish in English and are used to that orientation, but I often come across graphs made in more everyday contexts where the X-axis increases from right to left.
Back to numbers, though: either in English or Hebrew, can people read *large* numbers purely from left to right? For really big numbers like 920,000,000,000, I need two passes: one to count the commas and figure out what the first place value is, and another to actually read the number in order. I think I do the first pass right-to-left, counting up the place values in my head (thousand, million, billion) and then the second pass left-to-right, to actually read the number.
Sorry if this is a bit of a long comment, haha. Your videos are pretty cool so far, here's hoping your channel continues to grow!
Old arabs used to read units-tens-hundreds-thousands-millions but today's Arabs read millions-thousands-hundreds-units-tens.
So when reading it's like:
جبت 127 سرموكة يكفن؟؟
ا←← {→→} ←←←←←
would be cool if hebrew had a dedicated number numeral set that went right to left (kinda like the gematria system but with zero so it doesn't make a mess though that systems really isn't that bad)
All the Germanic languages use that, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven(one left), twelve(two left), thirteen(three ten) ... twenty(two ten)
Reason for why it's eleven and twelve, is because you counted to ten and have 1/2 left over, and then it's 3+10 all the way up twenty which is 2×10, hundred is interesting as a number as well, as it's also derived from the number 10, and this is really old, dkmt is ten and dkmtom is hundred, gehslom is the origin of Mille but the origin of Thousand is unknown, and if you wonder how dkmtom could become hundred, well, you drop the d, then if you're not Celtic you drop the m, kmto, and then you have slight consonant shifts and voila you get Proto-Germanic Hunda, and then it's left to history.
Altho the numbers are usually read from largest to smallest in megilat ester and probably some other texts its the other way around, but this might be due to persian influence or whatever
@@austin-ee4tp well... Technically you can add a geresh to make it a thousand, like in ה׳תשפ״ב so its sort of possibly able to function as three zeros.
This is what computer scientists know as “little-endian” versus “big-endian” meaning the difference between writing (or storing) the least-significant digit first or last. The term comes from Gulliver’s travels, where Lilliput is at war with their neighbour on whether to eat an egg starting form the big (round) end or the small (pointy) end.
In computing, where modular arithmetic is more important, and digits are usually represented by indices with the least significant one being 0, little endian makes the most sense if you ask me. When working in decimal, generally I care more about rounding an approximate answer, so starting with the largest digit seems more fitting in that case. They're ultimately equally arbitrary in both cases though.
@@angeldude101 "In computing [...] little endian makes the most sense if you ask me."
I agree. However, it seems big-endian architecture is more common.
@@seneca983 where? I think it’s more conventional in networking to use big endian numbers, but it seems currently used ISAs are typically little endian (x64, RISC V) or mixed endian (AArch64)
@@codaaaaaaaaa I somehow thought that x86 and x64 were big-endian but it seems I was mistaken.
@@seneca983 I understand :)
I'm a native arab and have studied historical reading methods, and one of the most suprising things is that some, not all, people read numbers RTL in a manner similar to hebrew.
for example: 23,456 would be read: ستة وخمسون وأربع مائة وثلاثة وعشرون ألف (sitah wa 'khamsoon wa arba' mi'ah wa thalathata wa 'ishroona 'alf). as in: six and fifty and four hundred and, three and twenty thousand
while normally being read: ثلاثة وعشرون ألف وأربع مائة وستة وخمسون (thalathata wa 'ishroona alf, wa arba' mi'ah wa sitah wa 'khamsoon) as in: three and twenty thousand, and four hundred and six and fifty.
Huh? Is this a historical way of saying numbers, or does it occur nowadays?
I'm a non native student of Arabic btw
What are the odds that the reason german and some other European languages run the order of numbers under 100 right to left in that same way, like 1 and twenty, is because the numeral system came to europe through the arabian language? Only exception being the early tens, that have their own words, outside the general scheme, german gets to 12, which is also the end of the historically not uncommon duodecimal number system. Now that I think about it, latin languages, that I know the numbers for, go up to 15 before switching to 10 and 6. I wonder if it has to do with the latin system using combinations of 5 and 10s in their old number system? It is also curious that the order is reversed in contrast to germanic languages, like dutch, english and german. I wonder how it looks for slavic languages.
I came to the comment section to write this… you wrote it better than i would
Why can't we just do this way, the digits will come at the left! So the number four hundred and thirty two will be 234 in Arabic script, you won't have to read it like two thirty four hundred but the usual way plus simplified writing, nobody mentioned this weirdly
How would you read a number decimals from RTL? E.g. 125.37
I have just one minor pet peeve with this. There is no reason to apologize for being curious and "wrong". That's how we learn a lot of the time, we ask questions about things that feel weird to us, and then the answer hopefully expands our horizon.
yep, felt the same way while watching another video of his. it's great content! I just think it's counterproductive to label curiosity or mistakes as terrible, they're part of the learning process
Big agree, I was gonna comment the same thing.
But he was wrong the second time as well. In hebrew we read numbers from left to right
@@sofiadri2638 and people stupid
Remember the lesson, kids: being right is more important than friendship.
As a native hebrew speaker I thought I'd add a bit about the directionality of numbers in hebrew.
When typing both letters and numbers on a phone or computer, the direction will change depending on what you're typing, same as it does when adding English text to a hebrew message and vice versa. Although in some cases (like starting a message with numbers/English text and continuing mostly in hebrew) the direction will be kinda bad.
Another interesting thing is that in a work setting some people prefer their excel sheets to be LTR and some like it RTL. Seems like the better you are in English more likely you'll want it LTR, even if you never worked with spreadsheets in English.
Also, in my work I sometimes use an old software that has numbers written from right to left, because when they adapted it to hebrew they couldn't have an exception for numbers. Although it's annoying at first, you quickly get used to it and it's no different from reading numbers normally (although switching between the two systems can be a but puzzling sometimes)
Question: do native Hebrew speakers combine English and Hebrew words when typing? It would make a lot of sense since it's a very common thing in my language, but it sounds like a hassle to switch from reading RTL to LTR and back to RTL again in the same sentance.
@@8is yeah we do that all the time.
Somid it's for only one word or a very common word you might just write the word in the hebrew script, but a lot of times you do write the word in English. It's not really annoying to change direction, the annoying thing is dealing with the apps that sometimes don't formar the text properly
I always liked how Americans will sometimes say "twenty hundred" instead of "two thousand". I suppose it comes from counting money in 100$ bills
@@buckplug2423 they absolutely never say that for numbers that could be expressed with just thousands, but when there are also hundreds they do
There is this one numbering system in Hebrew that's actually quite relevant if you mention calendars since it's very often used in the Hebrew calendar, which is basically a tally system where every letter is assigned a number, and 986 would be תתקפו (which happens to also be the word "attack" just by chance)
Yes, It's called Gematria
This number system actually appears in the calendar in the video
בינימין נתניהו = חורבן בית המקדש
simple gematria
In Hebrew (and also in Arabic) we read numbers from left to right just like you! We just switch directions when there are numbers. It’s not complicated at all because we’re used to it. Also remember, kids begin learning basic math around the same time they begin learning how to read, which means they are used to both systems (Hebrew and numbers). Love your channel btw xoxo.
In Arabic, we can read numbers from left to right (common) or from right to left (uncommon).
but for some reason reading them from right to left in Arabic is harder. (I think because we don't use to read them like that).
9 8 6: this number can be read in Arabic.
1/ Six and Eighty and Nine hundred
2/ Nine hundred and Six and Eighty. (yes, Six before Eight )
true
سته و ثمانون و تسع مئة (uncomen)
تشع مائة و سته و ثمانون (comen)
right?
@@valcondz yes you’re right - except for some spelling mistakes here and there-
Ah, so you mean that the way you *say* the numbers is reversible, but the value of the number is the same regardless. That's a fascinating consequence of importing Hindu numbers into Baghdad centuries ago!
Sounds kinda like the bible, if I remember correctly
Oh mein Gott, you have the best linguistic content I've seen so far on TH-cam, very much researched and full of details, love it :)
Dios mio, wieso zweisprachig?
@@aramisortsbottcher8201 warum not?
Try Tom Scott's Language Files th-cam.com/video/dUnGvH8fUUc/w-d-xo.html
Not to deduct anything from the amazing work done here, Tom Scott is just very good as well if not better.
divine!!
@@diamond5156 yes :D
Before my three score years and ten are up I hope to have four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
this channel fills the hole in my heart that xidnaf left like seven years ago
Hebrew does have a solution to right it "correctly" and it was actually seen in the calendar. The system of gematria uses Hebrew letters in place of numbers, corresponding to their place (for example a=1, t=20, and ta=21) and it's still used in Hebrew calendars and phrases to this day, as seen in the calendar you showed
I‘ve gotten hooked on these short little informative videos, well done!
In English we read text from left to right, but if we encounter a couple of logographs such as $5, we instantly switch to reading right-to-left without thinking twice.
Good point. And easily missed by native speakers.
As a native Hebrew speaker, we almost always read and say numbers from left to right.
Indeed. Never in my life (except when reading from the bible) have I seen someone write/read/say a number from the right to the left.
as a Hebrew speaker learning math, We also write equations from left to right, imagine taking a math exam in Hebrew! when I write an equation in the middle of a sentence I need to calculate how long the equation will be before writing it, start to write where I think the equation will end, and when it is longer I akwardly need to lead the equation into the next line, which looks horrible (and when it is shorter it also looks horrible). Why didn't we just adopt the arabic way of writing equations 😭😭(yes, they can write equations from right to left)
The most significant difference in numbers around the world is how we split them. Most of Europe uses 3,3,3 split because they say the numbers that way, in India it's a 2,2,2,3 split, same as brahmi script. This aspect is usually consistent with how you say the numbers in any place.
What is 3,3,3 split?
@@Checkmate1138 1 000 000, we split the numbers into chunks of three
@@Checkmate1138 Europeans split the numbers by thousands, Indians split them by hundreds after the first thousand.
in chinese its 4,4,4,... gives you a headache when you try to translate large numbers😓😓
@@coralineschmidt1078 Wait really? So how do you write 10,000 一万 in Chinese with numbers
weirdly enough , we Arabs usually say numbers like Germans like 235 we say "two hundred five and thirty" , this wasn't the case decades ago , we were saying something like "five and thirty and two hundred " so yeah we were reading digits from right to left but now we read them like German people do , Odd I know
wtf u talkin about
no he is caping
@@king_of_noobs1790 huh?
@@king_of_noobs1790 Nope. He's telling the truth.
@@king_of_noobs1790 Tf?
١٢٣ in Arabic is مئة و ثلاثة و عشرون. Literally one hundred and three and twenty. In olden times they said it ثلاثة و عشرون و مئة, literally three and twenty and one hundred. So yeah he is 100% correct.
"Reading and inputting telephone numbers is unnecessarily complicated in Arabic."
No, it's not. The fact that numbers go the opposite way never caused a problem for me or anyone I know. I've never heard anyone complaining about it or even bringing it up.
Well, if the telephone was invented in an arabic speaking country, we would've been the ones with the issue.
A few points I'd like to make as a native Hebrew speaker currently learning Arabic:
1) Both in Arabic and in Old Hebrew(s), we say the tens before the singular units, so 1496 would be one thousand-four hundred-six-and ninty. That being said, in ancient Hebrew (the stuff in the bible) a lot of the time the numbers are written "opposite", especially in ages. That's why when Abraham dies for example, it is said he lived חמש ושבעים ומאה שנה - five and seventy and one hundred years.
2) I would like to point out that for the longest time, the way to write numbers in Hebrew was using letters. א-1 ב-2 ג-3 and so on, and by י-10 you switch to tens. It's called gematria and it's a really interesting topic. The ancient Greeks also used this system with their alphabet.
3) The last thing I'd like to point out is that the Hebrew calendar isn't "supposed" to have numbers on it. The only number that is "supposed" to be on it is the number of the day in the month, written in Gematria most of the time. (the thing mentioned in the second point.) [I say "supposed" because there isn't a regulation of it or whatever. The hours are optional]
I started the video confused and ended lost.
For programmers, there's a concept called "endianness" to keep us guessing what order numbers are stored in. Some architectures want the most significant byte first. Others want the least significant byte first. Protocols and file formats all need to agree, so they may or may not match the architecture's native endianness. Some architectures, protocols, and formats support either way, and have a method to specify which is being used. Overall, it's a huge hassle.
I was searching for this comment, well done!
I made the conclusion's realization when u showed the calendar and the date boxes were all situated from left to right
Hi, When we arab-script writers want to write a text combined of strings and numbers (or mathematical equations) things get harder and It need to do some pre calculations and predictions about how much spacing do we need to begin writing the math/numbers. Like in this Persian text (written in Arabic alphabet) below:
جهت محاسبه نیرو جرم را در شتاب ضرب میکنیم که 20=10*2 میشود بنابراین ….
As you see to write 2 times 10 equals 20 we need to begin from left to write. I remember how much spaghetti notes I wrote in school.
To me when I see numbers in a Hebrew text it's just like seeing an English word in a Hebrew text.
I remember finding it really dumb when the Academy of the Hebrew Language decided that the proper way to write range of numbers in a Hebrew context is right to left(as in, 7 to 9 as 9-7) precisely because of this.
little endianness vs big endianness is fascinating and occurs not only in numbers, but in any sequence ordered by significance or some other metric
A subject that I've been pondering for years.
I love getting a chance to retract an apology, it's always so satisfying.
Israeli here. I remember being taught that letters are written this way and numbers this way, and that's just how it is. What did you think when you were taught that English is written left to right? That's just how it is.
As a little kid I thought, "well, those numbers come from the English speaking world, we borrowed the numerals from them, naturally they decide which way to write it, obviously they write it like they write their letters and we have to adapt."
The part at the end where he says it's stupid and his friend says "who cares?" Is accurate. Why does English have these useless gh's in words like night or light? Most people don't know the reason, and they don't care. As a kid you simply think that's just the way it is, the adults know better than me. As you grow up you become attached to it.
2:53 They definitely switched direction of 6
There is a pretty big advantage to saying numbers with the largest first, the reason is that it gives you order of magnitude immediately which can be extreemly important, and also gives context upon the first number instad of needing the entire number to be spoken first, eg 8 thousand, and fifty five as opposed to five and fifty and 8 thousand.
When dealing with small numbers this doesn't matter much, such as fifty-five or five and fifty, but as you get to larger numbers this becomes quite problematic.
Except there's no way to tell what the first digits represents when reading left to right before you've read the whole number and have (unconsciously or consciously) counted the number of digits; at least for numbers with more than about 5 digits (if it's formatted nicely with thousands separators; it's easier to count quickly, but you still need to count the groups of digits before you know if the first digit is millions or 100 thousands.
If we read it from smallest to largest (and that was how we pronounced it) we could just start reading and increase the digit value as we read... Of course since we don't have separate words for each digit between 1000 and 1 000 000 we still have to jump back and forth no matter what order we read it...
@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug maybe i am superhuman, or maybe it's just something acquired by being an engineering student, but i unconsciously count the order on higher numbers w/out a problem, even with no comma separators, it just occurs naturally to me that 37474748 is thirty-seven million and something, like i would read a word
but i get the reply, it's maybe more difficult for the man that reads out loud the number but it's easier for the man that hears it said out loud, and it tells you what's usually the most important part of the number
how many unread emails? *six hundre*- ah fuck
Note:
of course it isn't perfect because you can then continue with -hundred million… and then you would get the more important information that there is an error with the email client
but that's testament to the weird system that resers only every group of three digits
Yeah but imagine how good it would be if every number had a suspenseful reveal!
European system starts strong but by the half way point of a long number everyone wants to quit and go home
@@JSBax true! big-endian notation is very good for news where you start with what's most important, but not good at all for the suspenseful delivery of a more dramatic style
maybe we should adopt both styles as common and have a convention like saying nine and eighty and four hundreds, maybe also write the digits backwards when using the little-endian style
In Hebrew, we have our own counting system based on our letters, like in latin so 'חי is equal to 18 and it is read right to left. We just adopted the more widely used system.
But since phone numbers are just sequences of numbers, they would absolutely get reversed in Arabic. Think about it for a second: if they were writing a locker combination 10-20-30, they would not write that as 10-20-30. Interestingly I saw your exact original mistake in a Nativlang video, where he hilariously claimed that Arabic numerals were out of place in a right-to-left script.
Ah, the joy when you think the video is over, and want to write a slightly disappointed comment to correct the author, and then you realize the video, in fact isn't over, and the author is correcting his own mistake.
Ah, yes, the universal symbol for the English language:
The flag of British Columbia
As a native German, i still struggle to spell numbers sometimes.
Have been looking for the answer for years.
Now i feel stupid knowing that i already knew this stuff but didn’t weave it together
(1:20) Imagine if people could realise the same about date formats; it's not about which order you say it in, as long a everyone writes the same way. With a 4 digit year, writing 31/12/2022 and 2022-12-31 are both perfectly unambiguous.
The issue with date formats is not DD.MM.YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD, the issue is the silly American format (MM/DD/YYYY) that causes all the issues.
And for some reason they (their responsibility for using the non-standard format) refuse to use letters for the month, to make it disambiguous (4 May 2022 or May 4 2022 are both fine, but 04.05.2022 and 05.04.2022 are confusing).
The systems are only unambiguous for dates larger than 12.
@@chingizzhylkybayev8575 What else can 2022-05-10 mean? If I see a best before date written as 10.05.2022, I can be sure it's out of date. As long as it's a 4 digit year it works here.
@@Liggliluff the first thing you wrote means 10th of May, 2022. The second thing, though, could mean that or 5th of October of the same year.
It makes sence to write them from bigger to smaller because bigger number matters more....
one word: standardized
I dont think you're dead wrong here, the smallest to largest reading is what my mind immediately went to when learning this fact. It absolutely feels better, that's how you add, subtract and multiply, after all and I know I was taught to read numbers 6 ones, 8 tens and 9 hundreds.
But the point isn't that one language or the other wasn't bothered to swap it because it still makes logical sense anyway, it's that when you copy an entire system from someplace else, it's not the same as a word, or language structure, the english one and the spanish uno/a, or japanese 十 and french dix are perfect synonyms of each other, and when using the same script to refer to them in their respective languages, it would only cause headaches to try and tell whether someone was trying to say they wanted 15 cloves of garlic or if they wrote 51 in a misguided attempt to make it more comprehensible to you.
The numerals we use, aren't Arabic numerals. They are *West* Arabic numerals. The numerals that Arabic people use, which look significantly different, are *East* Arabic numerals. The way that people in the Arab world wrote numerals, grew to be different between the Western parts, and the Eastern parts. Our numbers come from the Western ones (though Arab-conquered Spain), and the ones used in the Middle East, come from the Eastern variants being standardized there.
The thing is, the Hindu-Arabic numeral system isn't native to Hebrew. Historically we (as well as the Greeks, by the way!) used letters and gave each letter a value (a system called Gimatriya), constructing numbers either that way or by simply writing them out. So the current year of the Jewish calendar is written ה׳תשפ״ב, which when you assign the values is (5) 400+300+80+2, which translates to 5782. That would be a bit like writing the year 1992 as A/zsrb, or considering the letters g, j, v, w, didn't exist in Latin, A/zzxtb.
I want to say that in Sanskrit (written in a brahmi script), numbers are actually read right-to-left, unlike other indian languages, e.g.
615 (६१५) = पञ्चदश pañcadaśa (five-ten/fifteen) अधिक adhika (more) षट्शत ṣaṭśata (six-hundred)
Fun fact: Sanskrit was also written at some point in history in Khroshthi script (right-to-left) which was sister script of Brahmi, used in west Pakisthan and Afghanisthan!
There's also a mathematical problem associated with starting with smallest first. It's that many real numbers don't even have a "least significant digit" because they have an infinite decimal expansion. But every real number, except for 0, will always have a most significant digit.
i think everyone mostly kept the consistency of left to right numbers because numbers are meant to be accurate data and so, even the format of writing and reading is kept left to right as started by brahmic scripts in india that invented the hindu-arabic numerals
It makes more sense to read the "higher" number first. If you're in a hurry or are communicating through a medium which has errors such as talking on the phone while going in a tunnel, hearing the 900 part of the number may be more important than the 6 or the 80. If you read from right to left then you should flip the numbers too.
I’m in 6th grade, and dear god, my teachers are gonna question every second on how I know this crap XD
Teacher's job isn't to limit your knowledge. Please research the studies on bullying - it would seem that bullies have better outcomes in life so that's why it perpetuates.
YOOOO love the usage of the BC flag to represent english speakers!!! Great channel mate, surprised you dont have more subs!
In Biblical Hebrew numbers where pronounced increasingly (for example, seven and twenty and a hundred (שֶׁ֛בַע וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים וּמֵאָ֖ה, Esther 1:1)), that’s why they are written in an increasing order of digits in Hebrew. I can only guess it was the same in Arabic and other Semitic languages.
I find it similar to mathematicians who usually write polynomials in an increasing (to the right) order of powers of x (i.e. 1+x+x^2/2+x^3/6+…).
In both cases, the series (of digits or monomials) can extend indefinitely in the direction of writing. For numbers, by infinitely many 0s (except p-addic). For polynomials, by higher powers of x.
That means that LTR languages write numbers in reverse.
1:40 "These are the Arabic numerals."
We call them Arabic because the came to Europe through Arabs but they originate in India. (EDIT: Oops, commented too soon. You talked about this later in the video.)
I was juuuust about to comment until about the 2 minute mark. I was *going* to say, "The order of a number is really important for things like sorting lists of numbers (making it left-to-right means you sort on the left first, then the right, then so on). Not all orderings are equivalent. Some are very much better, even if you speak the number differently." But then, you said a lot of that in the 2nd half anyway. You got me.
As someone who had these linguistical struggles in Arabic, here are some notes:
A. Numbers in Arabic are actually read backward from writing all the time. So are phone numbers. Also, we also have the quirk of reading the ones digit before the tens digit. To us, it's only a bother as far as knowing which way to read, say, an equation.
B. I believe programs that are made to support digital Arabic typography are specifically made to flip any number that is written. Rather, you write numbers left-to-right, then the space character brings you to the left of the number. This can have weird effects, especially if you're experimenting with multiple scripts on one line.
Having just tried it on my phone, the cursor remains to the left, but the numbers are generated to the right. Adding letters, however, acts as a separator, not changing the order of the digits before or after, but preventing mergers across the letter itself. In short, a letter acts like a space. Commas and spaces (by the way, commas are inverted) are moved to the rightmost spot, but only if you type a digit both before and after. That is the weirdest behaviour of all, to me.
Amazing: a video that rebukes itself
Haha.. the plot twist in the middle of the video 😁 enjoyed your content so much!
All love ⭐ from Arabia 🌙
I'm fairly sure this has been pointed out somewhere here, but the number at 1:12 isn't Neunhundertsechundachzig (which would be 986) but Neunhundertachtungsechzig (so nine hundred eight and sixty).
Exactly. As Matt Parker said: phone numbers are NOT numbers.
I wanted to make a comment on how, to me, this relates to people's preference for endianess, but it's 2 am and my brain is mush
At elementary school in Israel they just teach the simple fact that you read and write numbers from left to right, the opposite of text, and that's just how it is. It'll be absurd for me as a native Hebrew speaker to read or treat numbers like I do Hebrew words, it'll make math impossible. when we solve a problem in math we always do it left to right, phone numbers are the same, and even a single digit on a bus or the like would be placed at the leftmost side of the sign. In general, math is practically a language of it's own, one which goes from the left, to the right, no matter the native language of the person using it.
I hope although you retracted your apologie you are still friends with your friend :)
Also really interesting video thanks for giving a little more background information on the numbersystem we all just use everyday without questioning it. :)
we are still friends, don't worry aha
English still has left overs of the old system in the numbers 13 - 19 where you say thir-teen and four - teen and not ten-three, ten-four
I hella enjoy your videos
I wish there were more longer form content with deeper dives into their subjects as youtube autoplay always seems to lead me somewhere else to stuff I dont have any interest in. it blows to be drawn away from high quality linguistics content, especially when the content was about the length of a cable tv ad break
It is so annoying also because of rtl and ltr input when typing can mess things up as well as the fact that I have seen quite a few street sign errors caused by it
as a hebrew speaker, i still write numbers LtR even though the rest of the hebrew is RtL, but i guess that's also because we start from the larger units when reading out a number
I mean it's kinda intuitive, before you can get to ten you have to fill up the ones spot.
Germans: Haha, you American so weird saying month/day/year.
Also Germans: Ja, this number is nine hundred nine and ninety.
This just proves how non-canon right to left is...
When he was talking about "why don't we just put the 10's on the end", I had a terrible flashback to about how the US does their dates.
Hebrew and Arabic are different with numbers, even though they write them in the same direction, in spoken language they differ - Arabic speakers start from the least significant digit, Hebrew (like in English) start from the most significant digit.
So your initial attempt at an explanation would make sense for Arabic, but not for Hebrew.
in english i would read a big number right to left to count the thousands, millions, billions etc
And in the US dates are still written like that with month/day/year, akin to tens/singles/hundreds. So the 986 would be ninety-eight and six hundred.
Malagasy can read numbers from LTR or RTL. LTR is mainly used for telling the price of goods whereas RTL is used for most other cases.
986 can be read as:
=> 9 hundred and 8 ten and 6 unit (LTR)
=> 6 unit and 8 ten and 9 hundred (RTL)
RTL is easier to use for us because Malagasy was written in Arabic-based alphabet (RTL) before it slowly changed to Latin alphabet when the Christians arrived in the country.
You could go on with date formats. There are two logical ways: Year-month-day and day-month-year, and then there is the equivalent to neunhundertsechsundachtzig, Month-day-year.
Or address formats. Most postal systems nowadays begin by the name, the street address (whether the number goes before or after the street name varies by country), the city and zip code (again that code can go before, after or under the name of the town) and in the last line, the country. But some do it the different way, starting with the largest unit and going to the smallest. Which would make sense if you look how postal service is organized (send a letter to a city's central post office and let them sort out the details there). The postal services in most countries read the address bottom-up, which is against the usual reading direction. And old German postal addresses were the equivalent to neunhundertsechsundachtzig again (Hubert Meier, Bonn, Hauptstraße 46) before things were standardized the way they are now, I guess with the introduction of zip codes.
Chinese numeral system: I haven't encountered this issues once in my lifetime.
There are Arabic and Hebrew numbers written in the Arabic and Hebrew scripts, and those were written right to left (largest to smallest), but the Hindu-Arabic numerals took over, and they're now written left to right (largest to smallest).
I'd argue that there is a "best" way to write down/read numbers, and that's in the direction your writing is normally read. Consider this: you are reading a text containing a long number. The first digit you see is the highest power of 10 (or whatever cursed base you're using), therefore giving you the most "important" piece of information right at the beginning. When you're hearing a number, it's the same: you first hear "two million ...", which gives you the rough idea of the number, then the lower digits will follow, which you might not even care about. Unless you're doing some kind of modular arithmetic, you'll always care about the size of the number, rather than what is the last digit.
Nice video. That is also what I thought so.
Our numerals are Indian in origin, who also (generally) read left to right. Arabic actually has its own numeral system, though they mostly adopted the Indian system, and we adopted it from them
Persian is an interesting example. Because of the Arabic script, words are right to left, and numbers are left to right (going down orders of magnitude). This makes sense for Arabic and hebrew where they literally say numbers from right to left by increasing orders of magnitude, but in persian, numbers are said like all the other indoeuropean languages, decreasing orders of magnitude (100 --> 10 --> 1) so Persian's truly makes no sense.
From what I read in these comments, Arabic can actually read numbers both in increasing and decreasing orders of magnitude, and that decreasing order like in Persian is more commonly used (although they switch the single and tens digits around, so 986 becomes "nine hundred six eighty")
Bramic scripts do read left to right, but the Sanskrit number system, which was the basis for the place-value Hindu-Arabic numerals, actually is backward relative to English as you mentioned English used to be. Units were read first, then tens, hundreds, etc. So in old manuscripts 986 would be written as 689 because you say it as षडषीत्यधिकनवशतम् (six-eighty-plus-nine-hundred). The annoying thing is that in every modern printing of a Sanskrit text I've seen they prefer the Western order, I guess to avoid confusion since people are used to larger numbers being first. So when you see a number in Sanskrit you have to skip to the end, read it backward, and then go to the end again to keep reading. I wish they would stop doing this and just accept that Sanskrit's number system is different and write the digits in the traditional order.
No, I don't agree with it, as a Indian and Hindu. Now, all Indo-aryan languages do not have the same system of pronounciation as Sanskrit( some do, some don't, an example for the latter is my native tongue Odia), so 986 would be read as below- Nawsahaw-Chhaya-awsi( literally 9 hundred+ 6+80), but we write it the western way, not the ancient Sanskrit way, for uniformity with the western world and no inconveniences. Plus, Dravidian languages have their own number system( 1-onru/okati, 2-rendu, 3-moodu, 4-Naalu etc) and they follow vigesimal/base 20 system.
That being said, we still have some inconveniences while reading our ancient texts, since they wrote numbers just the Sanskrit way, even some 2-3 centuries earlier.
We don't prefer the Western way. Pronouncing the numbers in Sanskrit maybe different, but in most Indian languages, we pronounce the numbers the way we write. For example, in my mother-tongue Telugu, we say 968 as *Thommidhi vandhala aravai enimidhi* [Nine hundred sixty eight]. Just like how we write it. But, some languages readit differently, like Hindi, In Hindi we pronounce 968 as *Nau saw adsat* [Nine hundred eight sixty], but still Hindi speakers write numbers like other Indians do. Maybe the Indian numeral system is made to represent numbers from left to right {in order}, just like how we write our languages.
0:56 looks like the opposite way of how USA writes dates
Also, computers usually store & operate on numbers from the least to the most significant byte, but usually transfer from the most to the least significant one
It seems like a sensible explanation, that the right-to-lefters read numbers from the smallest digit to the largest, but one piece of evidence that it isn't true is Arabic telephone numbers, on eg business letters. The numbers are written the same way, ie left to right, as the Western numerals version. And of course you can only type them into a phone one way, beginning with the leftmost digit and carrying on to the right.
I do have to say, reading from the smallest to biggest is superior because its always annoying to have to count the zeros when it comes to numbers above onehundred thousand 100000
"100k"
As a native Hebrew speaker, it's not stupid. In fact, who said that everything must be written and read in the same direction anyways?? It wasn't ever hard for me at any point.
Love your videos btw.
yeah i took arabic last semester and the telephone thing tripped me up a bit.
We do write the numbers "wrong" . when I write in a notebook, i need in the middle of a sentence to make space for the perceived length of the number before i write it down. really annoying, especially often when im wrong and need to scratch over or write the End numbers between the line making a mess.....
Damn, you jumped 4k subs in one day LOL. I also have a question or something at 2:43 the tree shows proto-sinaitic > Phoenician> latin> 5 other language derivatives. How does Latin make it's way into Anglo english?? Since latin is the base for Hebrew and Arabic... how does that relate to english? I ask because I'm confused because how does Hebrew and Arabic have a completely different writing appearance. What latin base does hebrew and arabic use? Why the heck does anglo english use latin for a base?? (I understand anglo english pulls from germanic, french and latin among others... but I'm curious about this latin root).
P.s. this is not my area of study. I know I've probably used the wrong words. I'm dyslexic and I used the understand of root words to better spell or digest english. So, because of my dilemma of poor spelling I'm always interested in languages and their roots/creation.
The chart is about writing systems, not languages. The modern Hebrew script is from Phoenician via Aramaic; ancient (paleo)Hebrew is from Phoenician directly (or, better, is one example of a Canaanite script, as is Phoenician). Greek was separately borrowed from Phoenician traders. The Etruscans got their alphabet from the Greeks and the Romans got it from the Etruscans.
There are at least two native African right-to-left alphabets that already fixed this issue. In the N'ko and Adlam scripts have their own numbers which are written in the same direction of the letters and start with the biggest digit
Actually there's a case to be made that reading numbers right to left is much more natural. Reading fx. 624 in left to right we get the values as 600 + 20 + 4, but in order to know what magnitude the first digit is we have to scan the entire number before we can begin this process. For small numbers and for base 10 this isn't really a problem but anyone who has worked with binary numbers know how annoying it can be; I often switch direction so if i have to read 1001010 i read right to left because i can't immediately see what power of 2 the first digit should be, so i read the other direction: 0*1 + 1*2 + 0*2² + 1*2³ + 0*2⁴ + 0*2⁵ + 1*2⁶.
if you read a number from the biggest value to the smallest you state the most significant figures first. I think thats an inherently better quality to organizing numbers that way
Well, something that can be agreed upon most definitely is that the practice of swapping the 1s and 10s as we do in German is dumb as hell. Every time I have to say 98 or 89 I'm confused as to which of the ones I said. And I was born in 98...
The number comes into my head as "9" "8", and I have to consciously swap them around to get "achtundneunzig" (i.e. "eight and ninety"), and sometimes I accidentally double swap, and end up saying "neunundachtzig" (i.e. "nine and eighty").
It's not so much a problem for smaller numbers, since they are just kinda burned into my head, like "21" is simply "einundzwanzig" (i.e. "one and twenty") directly as a unit. But with bigger numbers, it's really annoying, especially when there are also 100s/1000s/etc. involved, which we read left to right as normal.
In Hebrew, when you write that something happens between two hours, you write the numbers normally LTR but the sentence RTL and also the hours in the same natural direction as you read it.
השיעור יתקיים בשעות 10:00-12:00
2:47 I think you got the chronology wrong
At 03:25 it says on the screen „has to be inputted“.
It has to be „input“, doesn't it?
Archaic Arabic used to read numbers as follows: e.g. 1950 FIFTY plus NINE-HUNDRED & ONE THOUSAND. خمسين وتسعمائة وألف, but the direction of placing the digits did not change, so numerically it remained 1950.
Honestly, I've always found smallest to largest digit to be the more sensible direction, especially given that there is always a ones digit but not always any of the higher-order ones (ignoring decimals and weird ways of writing them like .5). I also thought this was an artifact of us getting the numbers from the Arabs until I learned more about it.
Interestingly, Chinese, Japanese and Korean changed their direction from vertical or right-to-left to left-to-right because they humoured this numbering system.
Well… a lot of Japanese novels, etc are still written vertically top-to-bottom right-to-left, and printed newspapers in Japan mix that style freely with horizontal l-to-r… (yes, when horizontal it used to be right-to-left at one point).
@@petermsiegel573 Yes. Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan also keep the old vertical direction but China and Korea almost totally transform and only use at manga and book back.
In Czech you can switch between saying "twentythree" or "three and twenty" but because i don't speak the language regularly, i dont know which one is used more commonly
maybe a český bratr could help me out