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by 616c 4867 days ago
Not true, but close enough.

Even in Arabic, numbers are the exception, written from left to write.

انا من مواليد ١٩٨٦. I was born in 1986.

You will notice the number sequencing, although slightly different looking, is the same as in Western orthography. Why? Arabs took their numbering system from the Indians, and adapted it.

2 comments

"Even in Arabic, numbers are the exception, written from left to write."

This is true in modern times, but in antiquity Arabic and Hebrew numerals were written right-to-left.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad_numerals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_numerals

The only way in which it makes sense to talk about numbers being written "right to left" or "left to right" is when comparing the order of speech sounds to the ordering of numerals read. In English it goes from the biggest to the smallest: "420" ==> "four hundred and twenty".
Then German and Danish are neither left-to-right nor right-to-left, since 123 is einhundertdreiundzwanzig or hundredetreogtyve ("onehundredthreeandtwenty"), so that doesn't seem to work too well, either...