More evidence in favor of big-endian: In modern Hebrew and Arabic, numbers are written in the same direction as in English: e.g.
.שטחה של המדינה הוא 22,072 קמ”ר
As a native English speaker (and marginal Hebrew reader), I read each word in that Hebrew sentence right-to-left and then read the number left-to-right.
I never considered the possibility that native Hebrew speakers might read the number from right to left, in a little-endian way. But my guess is (contra lsusr) nobody does this: when my keyboard is in Hebrew-entry mode, it still writes numbers left-to-right.[1]
This indicates that even when you give little-endian an advantage, in practice big-endian still wins out.
I also tested in Arabic-entry mode, and it does the same even when using the Eastern Arabic numerals, e.g ١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩.
It’s hard to Google for this, but this indicates that modern Arabic also treats numbers as left-to-right big-endian [I just verified with an Arabic speaker that this is indeed the case]. It’s possible this was different historically, but I’m having a hard time Googling to find out either way.
Isn’t this showing that Hebrew and Arabic write numbers little-endian? Surely big-versus-little-endian isn’t about left-to-right or right-to-left, it’s about how numbers flow relative to word reading order.
But Hebrew and Arabic speakers read numbers left to right (even though they read everything else right to left). So they treat the numbers as big-endian.
Ah, thanks, I see now. You’re saying that even if it’s written with the small end before the big end according to the way the words flow, the direction of eye scanning and of mentally parsing and of giving a name to the number is still big end before small end? Similarly I might write a single word sdrawkcab in English text but the reader would still read it first-letter-to-last-letter.
Curious, when handwriting, what order do you write in?
More evidence in favor of big-endian: In modern Hebrew and Arabic, numbers are written in the same direction as in English: e.g.
As a native English speaker (and marginal Hebrew reader), I read each word in that Hebrew sentence right-to-left and then read the number left-to-right.
I never considered the possibility that native Hebrew speakers might read the number from right to left, in a little-endian way. But my guess is (contra lsusr) nobody does this: when my keyboard is in Hebrew-entry mode, it still writes numbers left-to-right.[1]
This indicates that even when you give little-endian an advantage, in practice big-endian still wins out.
I also tested in Arabic-entry mode, and it does the same even when using the Eastern Arabic numerals, e.g ١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩.
It’s hard to Google for this, but this indicates that modern Arabic also treats numbers as left-to-right big-endian [I just verified with an Arabic speaker that this is indeed the case]. It’s possible this was different historically, but I’m having a hard time Googling to find out either way.
Isn’t this showing that Hebrew and Arabic write numbers little-endian? Surely big-versus-little-endian isn’t about left-to-right or right-to-left, it’s about how numbers flow relative to word reading order.
But Hebrew and Arabic speakers read numbers left to right (even though they read everything else right to left). So they treat the numbers as big-endian.
Ah, thanks, I see now. You’re saying that even if it’s written with the small end before the big end according to the way the words flow, the direction of eye scanning and of mentally parsing and of giving a name to the number is still big end before small end? Similarly I might write a single word sdrawkcab in English text but the reader would still read it first-letter-to-last-letter.
Curious, when handwriting, what order do you write in?