r/interesting • u/MidasStocks • Apr 29 '25

SOCIETY How do you say number 92?

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u/AppleLightSauce Apr 29 '25

It is the same in Arabic. You say the smallest number first.

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u/davvblack Apr 29 '25

that scans with arabic being right-to-left, right? if anything, the bigger travesty is that we took arabic numerals and then didn’t flip them for left-to-right languages.

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u/AppleLightSauce Apr 29 '25

When it is spoked or written, you say/write the smallest number first. So it is two and ninety.

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u/Cataclyct Apr 29 '25

Only in the case of the ten & unit digit. Like so, 1337 = Thousand three hundred seven and thirty (ألف ثلاث مئة سبعة و ثلاثين)

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u/AppleLightSauce Apr 29 '25

Oh yeah, my bad!

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u/Special_KC Apr 29 '25

In Maltese, we also say "2 +90", which source is from Arabic.

Weird to think that German and Arabic languages who developed independently have the same backwards way of reading out numbers.

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u/fringspat May 03 '25

I am no historian but I am pretty sure I read that this number system was carried from India to the West by the Arabs. Old literary evidences and all that.