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Comment by ahomescu1 | Hacker News Reader

> Because big-endian matches how most humans have done it for most of history ("five hundred twenty one" is written "521" or "DXXI", not "125" or "IXXD").

Actually, it is possible that that was nothing more than an accident. We use Arabic numerals, and Arabic languages are written right-to-left. Then there are languages like German where digits are read in reverse, so "42" is read as "two-and-forty".

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The German "decade flip" is restricted to the tens and unit places; otherwise the order is English-like, with larger terms leading.

The cardinal number systems for most major languages lead with larger terms (as in English). I don't think there's anything deep about this, it's probably an accident. And there are languages which lead with smaller terms, such as Malagasy (the national language of Madagascar).

The ordering of digits in Arabic is not obviously relevant, per se, since spoken English ("one hundred twenty one") matches the order of the Arabic numbers, too.

> The ordering of digits in Arabic is not obviously relevant, per se, since spoken English ("one hundred twenty one") matches the order of the Arabic numbers, too.

I think it is relevant. It is possible that Western mathematics copied the Arabic notation (with right-to-left numbers), without also copying the correct way to read it (also right-to-left). For a similar situation in language, think of accents and the many different ways you can pronounce the same word.

Unlikely. Cardinal numbers in Old English, long before the slightest chance of contact with Arabs, were virtually identical to the modern system with respect to order of terms.

"For a similar situation in language, think of accents and the many different ways you can pronounce the same word."

Could you be more specific as to what you mean?

I mean the writing is identical, but the pronounciation varies wildly.

It's funny how the Germans and Dutch (rightfully) ridicule Americans for writing dates in middle-endian order like 9/11/2001, yet they say numbers with the decade flip "two and forty". That's just as ridiculous.

MM/DD/YYYY is simply a direct transliteration of spoken English, which makes it easy to read and write dates. In other languages, the spoken version is little endian or big endian, and the written version aligns accordingly. (At least for the languages I know.)

ITYM "... spoken American".

Are you saying it is commonly referred to as "The 11th of September, 2001" in England?

As a British English speaker, I'd say "yes".

Technically, I'd drop the "th of" and just say/write "11 September 2001".

Interesting. Would you choose "three July twenty fifteen", "July third twenty fifteen", or "the third of July twenty fifteen" (substitute "two thousand" for "twenty" if you like)? Assume someone has asked you the date and you're responding out loud.

I would say "three July twenty fifteen".

It took me a while to figure this out because actually it's quite rare to speak a date including a year without reading it - most spontaneously-spoken dates are this year (so the year is implied) and for a read dates, I'd probably say whatever was written.

The clincher was how I'd say my birth date, which would be of the form above.

I'm not claiming to be the definitive British English speaker, though! ;)

...and as another poster commented, it might depend on context - for example, "September 11" is often used in British English because it refers to an American event.

As a Brit, IMO both are perfectly acceptable in English prose. It isn't unusual to say "October the 4th" as opposed to "the 4th of October".

We would normally refer to that as September 11 because it's much more talked about in the US, and that's the phrase used there.

Any other dates will likely be in the same order as written. For instance, the rhyme for bonfire night is 'remember remember, the fifth of November'. I believe that many in the US also talk about the fourth of July, rather than July fourth, so it's not like English has the hard-and-fast rule you were proposing.

Ok, fair enough. What do you say for non-special dates like July 3rd, 2015?

'Third of July, 2015' or more likely 'third of July'. The date format really isn't lying to us in UK English.

Americans read and write dates in middle endian. Germans and Dutch only read numbers with decade flip, they are written as usual. Furthermore with "two and forty" there can be no confusion since it's not "two and four", so it's clear that "forty" refers to the tens position and "two" to the units position. It is of course not ideal, but not nearly as much cause of confusion as the middle endian dates, because there's simply no way to know what 9/11/2001 means.

At least they (we) stay consistent between 13 and 99, while a certain other language elects to switch the flip at 20.

I think we should all take a moment to admire the francophone Swiss for boldly dropping much of the madness that is french counting. (Yes, I am looking at you, quatre-vingt-dix-neuf!)

I think the way we do it is more natural. Numbers which have an infinite decimal expansion towards the right side of the decimal point are relatively much more common and useful compared to numbers which have an infinite decimal expansion towards the left.

For example, you can write out e as 2.7182...

However, if we were to flip this notation, ...2817.2, it isn't clear where to begin writing the number, if we read(and write) from left to write. With the regular representation, you write out the 'major' parts of the number first and then give out as many details as you want. You have the beginning of your string in mind. With a reversed system, you don't have the beginning but the end of the string in mind.

All you are pointing out is that mixing little-endian and big-endian may cause trouble. You're not saying anything about which of the two is better.

Anyway, it doesn't matter what you think is 'more natural.' Computing in binary probably feels less natural to you, but nobody is going to stop making binary computers because of that.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-adic_number for an overview of the system of numbers that actually works this way, similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two's_complement with infinitely long registers.

Do they also call 1042 "Forty two and one thousand"?

After looking up some German for beginners (German speakers, feel free to correct me), I found out that 1042 is read like "one thousand two and forty".

German speaker here, that's correct. When the number is between 1000-1999 the "one" in "one thousand" is sometimes omitted, so "thousand two and forty".

Also known as middle endian.

Even if its weird, its nothing like French numerals.

Aren't the only weirdness in French 70, 80 and 90? That's nothing compared to German :)

Georgian has a fun number system too - numbers between 20-90 are expressed as a multiple of 20 + a number between 1 and 19: http://blog.conjugate.cz/georgian-is-fun

Its weird its not consistent! :D

The german thing is just weird until you get used to it, with french I constantly go, wait, crap this is over 70, whats the deal again. I blame the wine consumption.

Can't be worse than Dutch counting!

Yeah, but the way individual languages do numbers doesn't necessarily make sense. In French, 99 is read as "four-twenties and ten-plus-nine"

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