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Re: Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl Sjok) [long]

From:kcasada <kcasada@...>
Date:Monday, January 10, 2005, 17:55
Hi, my name's Krista Casada; I'm new to this list, and find it fascinating. I
had one little comment on numbers in Arabic. Someone said (sorry, I don't have
the original posting) that they seem to be written backwards relative to the
rest of the text. Actually the situation's a bit more complicated. If I want
to write the number 1995, for instance, the digits appear on the paper as
1995, and indeed appear to be in reverse order relative to the text, but are
read as "thousand, nine hundred, five and ninety." So the spoken version is
not exactly a reversal of the written one.
Does that make sense? And would somebody please explain to me why we have to
use masculine numbers with feminine nouns (and vice versa) in Arabic?
Please, please, please??? :)

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Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>