Japanese/Arabic Numerals

[Gyakuto]

Why do the Japanese use Arabic numerals in preference to standard Japanese numerals? I’ve noticed this more and more in various Youtube clips where artisans are making something.

I understand them not using the older and more intricate ‘Koji’ number characters as they do in legal documents, but I’m bemused by the use of Arabic numerals in Japan!

 

[GiveYourPaw]

Why do the Japanese use Arabic numerals in preference to standard Japanese numerals? I’ve noticed this more and more in various Youtube clips where artisans are making something.
View attachment 30129

I understand them not using the older and more intricate ‘Koji’ number characters as they do in legal documents, but I’m bemused by the use of Arabic numerals in Japan!

Maybe because it's faster ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Xue Sheng]

Excepted numbers, easily readable, globally

China does the same thing

 

[Oily Dragon]

Pretty sure this was a Meiji Restoration effort to adopt some upgrades from outside Japan, namely international numeral systems, a constitutuon, a parliamentary government, etc.

 

[Oily Dragon]

And guns. Lots of guns.

I had an afterthought, by the late 1800s Japan was crawling with American and European firearms. So maybe that alone sped up the adoption of Arabic numerals.

Can't run an empire without lots of guns, and in the case of Japan nearing the 20th century, most of those were imports.

 

[Gyakuto]

That makes sense by why stop at numerals when instructions for western technology etc would likely be in English? I have heard there was a movement to adopt romanji in the Japanese lexicon.

The first guns arrived in Japan in 1543 with the aruebus from the Portugues.

 

[Oily Dragon]

That makes sense by why stop at numerals when instructions for western technology etc would likely be in English? I have heard there was a movement to adopt romanji in the Japanese lexicon.

The first guns arrived in Japan in 1543 with the aruebus from the Portugues.

To build an empire you need lots and lots of guns, so they needed to wait for mass production imports to really rule the country. The samurai had rifles too, but were no match for imperial troops with boxes of rifles they were getting by the 1860s.

As far as getting rid of pictographs, we will see. They are archaic but very embedded culturally. Languages don't just suddenly change overnight, it can take centuries. Alphabets take thousands.

Though I did read somewhere that Japanese speakers have an easy time picking up written English because they are already so good at learning language related symbols, what's another 26? Not sure if true.

 

[Hot Lunch]

Why do WE use "Arabic" numerals (not really, the image below is what Arabs use) instead of Roman numerals, when we use the Roman alphabet? I suppose we use them for the same reason that the Japanese use them.

 

[Gyakuto]

Why do WE use "Arabic" numerals (not really, the image below is what Arabs use) instead of Roman numerals, when we use the Roman alphabet? I suppose we use them for the same reason that the Japanese use them.


View attachment 30148

Arithmetic is very laborious using Roman numerals. The units/ten/hundred etc system we adopted make it much, much easier. Plus the Romans didn’t have the zero.

My friend did his PhD with Stephen Hawking…and is thus a maths wizard. During a work meeting, where he was always scribbling down equations and stuff, I leaned over and whispered, “You know the Hindus, my ancestors, invented the zero?” Without missing a beat he responded, “It’s a shame they did so little with it.”

 

[Oily Dragon]

Why do WE use "Arabic" numerals (not really, the image below is what Arabs use) instead of Roman numerals, when we use the Roman alphabet? I suppose we use them for the same reason that the Japanese use them.


View attachment 30148

Those are the Eastern Arabic numerals.

The (Western) Arabic Numerals are 0-9.

What gets used as a numeral system any specific place in Asia or Africa depends on context and local language.

Europe ended up with the Western Arabic system mostly because it was closer, and China because of Islamic nomads like the Hui that traveled the Silk Road.

 

[Hot Lunch]

My friend did his PhD with Stephen Hawking…and is thus a maths wizard. During a work meeting, where he was always scribbling down equations and stuff, I leaned over and whispered, “You know the Hindus, my ancestors, invented the zero?” Without missing a beat he responded, “It’s a shame they did so little with it.”

According to this, the Sumerians and the Mayans beat your friend's ancestors to it:

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero?

Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[Gyakuto]

Numerals on one of my watches.

 

[Oily Dragon]

View attachment 30342
Numerals on one of my watches.

Those numerals are weird. Why are they mixed like that?

Do you see what I mean? It's a Chinese 11 and 12, but not 10, 1, 2, etc? It's like a mix.

 

[Gyakuto]

They’re known as ‘koji’ numerals. They were, and are, used on very formal legal/financial documents to prevent the addition of strokes to alter amounts and values. They only go up to ‘ten’, however, so beyond that they resort to the common nomenclature.

 

[Oily Dragon]

They’re known as ‘koji’ numerals. They were, and are, used on very formal legal/financial documents to prevent the addition of strokes to alter amounts and values. They only go up to ‘ten’, however, so beyond that they resort to the common nomenclature.

Ok this is from the old Chinese system of "little" and "big" writing.

It's funny because it's still easy to turn a 1 into a 10.

 

[Gyakuto]

Ok this is from the old Chinese system of "little" and "big" writing.

It's funny because it's still easy to turn a 1 into a 10.

Yeah but you’d have to take the crystal off with the proper equipment and get silver paint and a tiny brush and then you’d have ‘ten, ten’ and it’d be confusing to tell the time etc. Why would you bother?

 

[EJC]

Ok this is from the old Chinese system of "little" and "big" writing.

It's funny because it's still easy to turn a 1 into a 10.

At the risk of necroposting, there are "old style" characters for numerals other than 1 to 9; you'll note that there is one for "10":

Number	Common	Formal
In use	Obsolete
1​	一	壱	壹
2​	二	弐	貳
3​	三	参	參
4​	四	四	肆
5​	五	五	伍
6​	六	六	陸
7​	七	七	柒, 漆
8​	八	八	捌
9​	九	九	玖
10​	十	拾	拾
100​	百	百	佰
1000​	千	千	阡, 仟
10000​	万	万, 萬	萬

 

[Sammy Naur]

At the risk of necroposting, there are "old style" characters for numerals other than 1 to 9; you'll note that there is one for "10":

Number	Common	Formal
In use	Obsolete
1​	一	壱	壹
2​	二	弐	貳
3​	三	参	參
4​	四	四	肆
5​	五	五	伍
6​	六	六	陸
7​	七	七	柒, 漆
8​	八	八	捌
9​	九	九	玖
10​	十	拾	拾
100​	百	百	佰
1000​	千	千	阡, 仟
10000​	万	万, 萬	萬

Yeah that's not "old style" it's modern hanzi, + always means 10, and if you notice first guy made a joke about how easy it was to change a 1 to 10, and the other guy also made a joke about having to break open his watch.

Pretty certain first guy meant the fact that turning a - into a + is how you go from 1 to 10 in Chinese, or multiply by 10.

In other words, a single stroke. This is pretty common trick actually and often used in shipping to exaggerate quantity.

Where did you get that table?

 

[Haruhiko]

Why do the Japanese use Arabic numerals in preference to standard Japanese numerals? I’ve noticed this more and more in various Youtube clips where artisans are making something.
View attachment 30129

I understand them not using the older and more intricate ‘Koji’ number characters as they do in legal documents, but I’m bemused by the use of Arabic numerals in Japan!

Globalisation of technology, especially in the IT industry necessitated a standardised numerical system. They're also convenient as kanji in more complicated strings of numbers, like phone numbers or address, can lead to confusion.

For example, writing 1,234,567 in kanji (百二十三万四千五百六十七) is lengthy and can be confusing. In contrast, “1,234,567” in Arabic numerals is more concise and reduces ambiguity. The use of Arabic number system immediately, visually, communicates it's a number. The numeral orthography is also simpler.

A lot of these changes, to my knowledge, came out of post-WW2 era.

 

[Gyakuto]

The Chinese/Japanese writing system and pursuit down the ceramics line rather than glass development, are the two causes of Japan being left behind technologically. They made great scientific progress internally but because they published in glyphs rather than English, they remained stagnant because only they read the papers and the rest of the scientific community couldn’t contribute to their amazing work. A recent example of this is the Japanese KAATSU ‘biohack’ technique for training. The discoverer, Sato Yoshiaki, performed his groundbreaking experiments and developed the ideas in the 80s but published in Japanese. The West has only fairly recently found his work and expanded upon it after his research institute started publishing in English!

The Chinese/Japanese refined the ceramic arts in favour of using glass so didn’t invent and use lenses/microscopes/telescopes etc as happened in the West and therefore didn’t make the groundbreaking technological and scientific progress made in the West!

Now however, they’re both streets ahead of the West because they read, write and publish in far less cumbersome English. China’s quantum computing state is believed to be light years ahead and Japanese biomedical advancements are mind boggling.