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Arabic Numerals

Almost every culture on Earth uses Arabic numerals (0 - 9). While in Cairo I noticed the plates on cars and buttons on phones, they are not Arabic numerals.

I asked a driver, he laughed and said the entire world uses Arabic numerals except the Arab nations !!!.

Why does Arabia not use the numerals they invented ???

Sauron Sun 30/01/05 05:08

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Quizmonster
Sun 30/01/05
09:07

'Arabic' is probably a misnomer for what were originally 'Indian' numerals. Click http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/Arabic_numerals.html

for a website with more information. Once there, you might click on the blue links for more background.

dafyd
Sun 30/01/05
15:23

We call our numbers Arabic to differentiate them from Roman numerals.

In fact, our numerals aren't *too* dissimilar to Arabic ones - they have evolved a bit though

allen
Mon 31/01/05
15:43

Arabic numerals, in Arabic, don't look precisely similar to those we use. Zero, for example, is a dot (like a full stop). Seven is like an upside-down capital V. Three is reasonably similar. And so on. So an Arabic speaker who hadn't studied English wouldn't recognise our numerals as Arabic, in the same way.

Octavius
Tue 01/02/05
17:40

The Arabic numeral system has used many different sets of glyphs (carvings or characters). These glyph sets can be divided into two main families the West Arabic numerals, and the East Arabic numerals.

East Arabic numerals are Arabic-Indic (the ones on the number plates). East Arabic-Indic is a variety of East Arabic numerals. West Arabic numerals are labelled European (the ones we use).

Most historians agree that the Arab numerals were first conceived of in India (particularly as Arabs themselves call the numerals they use “Indian numerals”, arqam hindiyyah), and was then transmitted to the Islamic world and thence, via North Africa and Spain, to Europe (mainly by Fabonacci aka Leonardo of Pisa - an Italian mathematician).

Our numbering follows a combination of various numbering patterns (or glyphs) including Arabic-Indic (indoa), Eastern Arabic-Indic (Persian/Urdu), Devanagari (Hindi) and Tamil.

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