From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat May 15 2004 - 11:34:10 CDT
From: "Chris Jacobs" <c.t.mjacobs@freeler.nl>
> From: "John Cowan" <cowan@ccil.org>
> > Jony Rosenne scripsit:
> >
> > > However, in Hebrew and Arabic, numbers are written left to right and so
> > > are Latin and other LTR script quotations. So RTL really means mixed
> > > direction, and the bidi algorithm is there to handle it automatically
> > > with little user intervention.
> >
> > BTW, Peter Daniels told me viva voce that arabophones, like persophones
> > and hebraeophones, do (hand)write numbers LTR starting with the most
> > significant digit. But we still have no confirmation from a native
> > arabophone.
>
> Sounds plausible.
>
> I do write numbers like 21 RTL, that's how I pronounce them.
>
> eenentwintig
> einundzwanzig
These are apparent counter-examples in Germanic languages (German, Dutch) where
you pronounce the units before the tens.
However even in German, the higher-scaled digits are pronounced first. The
special inversion of units and tens (with a joining "und" between them) is a
local inversion that occurs in higher subgroups but subgroups of digits are
still spelled ordered from highest to lowest scale (for example:
2100="einundzwanzighundert" for years or "zweitausendhundert" for cardinals;
21000="einundzwanzigausend").
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat May 15 2004 - 11:35:38 CDT