this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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German numbers are weird because we kinda switch the last two digits.
43 in most languages becomes '40 - 3', but in german you say '3 & 40'.
But we do not pronounce the whole number backwards.
143 in most languages becomes '100 - 40 - 3', in german you say '100 - 3 & 40'.
Huh. That’s exactly how we do it in Arabic.
I’ve always rationalized it as n + a set, so 43 is 3 and the 40 that we’ve added up before it.
But then we do the same thing you do with 100. 100 and 3 and 40. So we list everything from largest to smallest order of magnitude except for the last two digits.
I don’t think I’ve thought much about this since I was like ten years old (with a blip thinking about it in uni, when learning the different ways computers represent numbers). I remember getting tripped up with numbers as a kid when saying them in Arabic specifically because of this.
For another layer of headache keep in mind that we write from right to left but numbers are left to right just like in European languages. Funny.