Item — HN Reader

There are actually two ways to read numbers in Arabic.

The most common is to start from the most significant digit and read left-to-right until the last two digits, which you then read right-to-left.

A less common alternative is to read right-to-left starting from the least significant digit.

1 comments

Interesting! How do you know which alternative is being used?

To give an example, you could read 1234 as either 'one thousand and two hundred and four and thirty' or 'four and thirty and two hundred and one thousand'.

Now that I think about it though, I've only seen the latter way used for the year in a date.