From: Jony Rosenne (rosennej@qsm.co.il)
Date: Wed Jun 22 2005 - 17:54:59 CDT
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org
> [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Gregg Reynolds
> Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 9:09 PM
> To: Peter Kirk
> Cc: Unicode Discussion
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Colouring combining Marks]
>
>
> Peter Kirk wrote:
>
> > I rather agree that it doesn't matter, but the answer to
> the question is
> > mostly No. In the oldest written Hebrew sources that we
> have, the Hebrew
> > Bible, numerals are written out in full. The ordering rule in the
> > earlier books is that thousands precede (i.e. are written
> to the right
> > of) hundreds, hundreds mostly precede smaller numbers, and
> tens mostly
> > precede units, i.e. consistently most significant part
> first; but in
> > later biblical books units often precede tens and hundreds
> sometimes
> > follow smaller numbers. A system of writing numerals with
> letters was
> > introduced after the Hebrew Bible was completed and is
> still sometimes
> > used; in this system the more significant part precedes (to
> the right)
> > the less significant. Reference: GKC §5k,134i. The order
> only changed in
> > modern times when western numerals were incorporated into
> Hebrew text
> > without being reversed.
>
> Thanks. So I take it that in modern Hebrew something like
> 1923 would be
> spoken one thousand nine hundred twenty three?
Yes, but irrelevant. It is spelled one nine two three.
Jony
> (BTW, note
> that "1913"
> nineteen thirteen in English combines a pair of LSD phrases!)
> Also what
> is "GKC"?
>
> >
> > I understand that ancient Egyptian numerals were also
> written with the
> > more significant part first, in the direction of writing.
> This is also
> > true of Greek and Roman numerals. So, unless Dean can give us
> > counter-examples from cuneiform, I would say that
> historically numerals
> > were almost always written more significant part first.
>
> Hmm. It's an interesting thesis. For Arabic I think (but I'm not
> certain) that traditional notation would put the larger number to the
> right of the smaller. E.g. qaf = 80, dal = 4, so to write the
> equivalent of 84 one would have placed the qaf to the right
> of the dal.
>
> But of course you can't really compare traditional language-based
> schemes with base 10 positional notation.
>
> -gregg
>
>
>
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