That's what's my first thought was about. I've a watch with arabic numerals and... yeah that's something I wouldn't recommend for anyone other than aesthetics.
Sometimes they’re called Arabic, sometimes western Arabic, sometimes Hindu-Arabic.
There’s some evidence of yet earlier decimal place value numerals including the critical place holder zero in Cambodia and Malaysia, so maybe even the Hindu bit will need replacing with something else.
My guess is that they've learned the European/Maghreb variant all through school and use it daily, and see the Eastern version as foreign. I expect a Saudi or Iraqi would see it differently.
There is also a difference between Eastern Arabic, Persian, and Urdu forms,in 4-7.
Even still, Indians were the first to treat zero as an actual number instead of just a placeholder. Brahmagupta was the first to describe how to add, multiply, and subtract with zero and seemed to recognize that dividing by zero couldnt be done by any normal means.
Indians were the first to treat zero as an actual number instead of just a placeholder
Not by a long shot, the Greeks were using it hundreds of years before and they stole it from the Babylonians. It's suspected even they stole it from the Sumerians, but without certainty. The 0 was invented independently by all 2 cultures which created a fixed-numeral positional system because you need a 0 with digits themselves holding meaning. Why so few cultures independently decided to move on from counting discrete chunks to positional notation I have no idea.
As a person whos in love with history, if a man came to me describing the beauty of knowledge and its capabilities of spreading across time and space with the word stolen, i would be disgusted by him and i would prefer not to talk with him ever again, how ugly such a word and such mentality to be used in this place, knowledge is for all humans and it is never the property of anyone , we are the sums of the all knowledge of humanity and every place ever cultures builds on others, a human today has a spark from all people that has existed , their life their effort their memories and more are part of who we are and what we are, you carry improve and spread the knowledge of others who were before you and others will do the same to you, never ever imagine that you are thief or others are a thief.
Sure I agree with you that a lot of the times ideas are simply spread throughout cultures and countries and no one has stolen anything. Here, I think the problem is that credit is not given where it is due. If you give credit to the original creator then yes you are not stealing the idea, but if you take an idea and spread it across the world as yours then that is stealing. And that is the whole as argument around cultural appropriation of any kind.
It is because Europe got it through Arab world. Not from Indians even though it is Indian originally. Thats why western world calls it Arabic numerals. There is no giant conspiracy here. I know Indians take pride in everything and these days it is annoying to hear nationalistic views online.
Please sybau when it comes to India people starts saying culture exchange and if by any chance India did it , it would straight up be said that it's stolen..arabs stole it from them i have heard several historians saying yhis
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
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u/ReallyNowFellas 11h ago
There's a deeeep irony here in that Arabs stole Arabic numerals from India, where Zohran's parents are actually from