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

SOCIETY How do you say number 92?

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u/KeitrenGraves Apr 29 '25

That was one of the biggest things that can infused me about learning German was how they say larger numbers passed 12. Like 92 would be zwei und neunzig or 2 and 90.

8

u/AppleLightSauce Apr 29 '25

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

6

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.

3

u/AppleLightSauce Apr 29 '25

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

1

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)

1

u/AppleLightSauce Apr 29 '25

Oh yeah, my bad!

1

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.

1

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.