Does everyone in the world us Arabic numbers? If not what do they use then?
The Chinese use both their own and Arabic ones, for instance. The Arabic system is so practical, and used by so many “dominant” countries, that pretty much everybody at least knows them, as far as I know.
I make a living in the coin biz, so I need to know how to read dates on coins both current and older.
My standard reference lists 25 different numeral systems. Some of them are Hebrew, Ethiopian, Georgian, Korean, Thai, etc. Many of these are still used on coins and banknotes from those countries.
But I would agree with Elvis that most people today are familiar with (Western) “Arabic” numerals. Not Arabic(Arabic/Turkish) numerals. Does that make sense?
Actually both sets of Arabic numerals are of Indian origin. What we use in the West apparently was displaced in much of the Middle East by another set.
There’s also those crazy Romans.
MM my butt.
While I initially left out Roman numerals and Greek in my list of 25 numeric systems(because they just dont use them anymore), I just remembered----
The US gold coins issued between 1986 and 1991 used Roman numerals for dates.
As resident nit-picker I need to point out to mongrel that we use Arabic numerals, rather than Arabic “numbers”. Technically, the number is the quantity itself and the numeral is the symbol we make to represent it.
Here is a reference page for the above comments:
http://islam.org/mosque/ihame/Ref6.htm
The fourth row (Modern Arabic (eastern)) is the one used in Arab countries.
Damn NITS! The third row shows the numerals.
Please accept my apology. I tried reading from left to right, not top to bottom.
Sorry to have blown it. Fern was absolutely right.