Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

arabic-numbers.koljapluemer.com

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

#21
post #10

Looks great. I just have a question. Why do you call it "itneen" instead of "Etneen" or more formally "Ethnayn"? I understand that you're probably leaning toward using Egyptian Arabic (I am Egyptian by the way) because it is the easiest dialect, but to be honest I myself got confused for two seconds. Edit: I went through more questions, and you're definitely using Egyptian Arabic, not formal Arabic.

Yes, you are right, and that should probably be clarified.

Re: Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

#22
My initial reaction before seeing the site was "but the numbers we use are arabic", of course, I realized you were trying to link number to spoken language.

Are arabic numbers harder to speak than any other language? Numbers seem to be the first thing to learn, and are rather simple, or is there a reason in Arabic that they are difficult, or more needed than in other languages?

Re: Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

#23
A bit of a tangent, but could someone tell me if I'm wrong about the following: Arabic being read right to left while digit significance increases right to left means they use little-endian (although it looks like they say numbers in a middle-endian fashion like in German). This means users of left to right scripts made a mistake by not reversing the digits when copying the system.

What I can't find quickly is whether the Indian system where this originated wrote numbers in a big-endian or little-endian fashion. As far as I can tell, Indian languages are mostly written left to right, so should the first people to use the system with a right to left script have reversed the direction of digits?

Re: Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

#24

A bit of a tangent, but could someone tell me if I'm wrong about the following: Arabic being read right to left while digit significance increases right to left means they use little-endian (although it looks like they say numbers in a middle-endian fashion like in German). This means users of left to right scripts made a mistake by not reversing the digits when copying the system. What I can't find quickly is whethe…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

#25

My initial reaction before seeing the site was "but the numbers we use are arabic", of course, I realized you were trying to link number to spoken language. Are arabic numbers harder to speak than any other language? Numbers seem to be the first thing to learn, and are rather simple, or is there a reason in Arabic that they are difficult, or more needed than in other languages?

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

#27
post #18

Good work so far! Here’s my feedback after trying it out: Pressing “Next” is just an additional, non-necessary step. Picking an answer should be enough to move to the next question, introducing a short delay might enhance the UX. You are having some numbers misspelled, include, but might not be limited to, “اتنين/etneen” which should read “إثنان/ethnan” instead, “تلاتة”—>“‎ثلاثة”, and “ثمانية”

+1, I was confused by these misspellings as well. Otherwise awesome work.

Re: Show HN: I'm building a tool to practice numbers in Arabic

#30
You might want to consider adding keyboard shortcuts for the keys 1-4 corresponding to the answer order so that the questions can be answered more quickly on desktop. I also agree with the others as far as spelling variations, maybe you want to include Modern Standard Arabic and potentially other dialect versions as well.
Post reply on HN