Why Are “Numerals” Significant?Īt many conferences, I’ve talked about the complexities of systems for inputting characters into computers and how “Qwerty” keyboards, and qwerty variants, dominate the computer scene but simply cannot hack it for complex alphabets such as Chinese, regardless of whether that’s simplified or traditional style Chinese characters.
Numbers in different languages numerals registration#
So, for instance, it is now typical for car registration plates all over the world to feature Hindo-Arabic numerals. So, unbelievably, humans were writing numbers for several thousand years without being able to represent “zero.” The numerals were adopted by Persian mathematicians in India, passed onto Arabs and thereby transmitted to Europe and are now known as “Hindu-Arabic numerals.” Over the centuries-and even prior to the much more recent evolution of the web-these numerals have become commonplace all over the world, even if that means that they sometimes sit alongside and parallel with local numeric systems. But somehow, he forgot to create the “0” or zero and that was left to “ Brahmagupta” some one hundred years later. “ Aryabhata” developed “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9” in the fifth century. Thankfully, all our lives were made simpler by two Indian mathematicians. This picture illustrates Arabic, French and Numbers all working together to describe a bus stop! However, the key point is that they were not numerals as we know them today. These tally systems evolved by using other symbols, such as “/\” to represent multiples (often fives) to save having to spend all day notching your valuable sticks. Even though Roman numbers used roughly the same Latin characters we use today, they evolved from a system used by earlier Italians and Dalmatians based around notching “ tally sticks” where the number of notches indicated the number along the lines of “IIIII” meaning “five”. You may recall that Roman numerals, in use prior to our present system, consisted of “letters” combined together to create numbers, so “IV” represents four and “VIII” is eight. It may surprise you to learn that “numerals” as I shall refer to symbols which refer to numbers in this post, evolved very differently from other written characters. In part, I want to try to explain why numbers are so popular with websites in the far east.įirst, a bit of history. No, I’m not referring to counting your money or calculating your average page views per day, but rather looking at how “numerals” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0) have really taken over the world and dominate in a way in which the Latin alphabet in which I’m writing now has not. Today, I plan to delve into the global success of numbers.
I promised that on my return from China and the far east I would share some insights.