Counting and Numbers in German, Roman and Arabic Languages

Journal of Media & Mass Communication Vol. 1, No. 1, June 2015

Abdulkerim Uzağan Department of German Language and Literature, Faculty of Literary, Yüzüncüyıl University, Van, Turkey Email: [email protected]

Abstract— In our survey we'll compare and give examples According to the survey made by bio psychologist how the ancient people count before they had Arabic-Indian Onur Güntürkün from Ruhr University Bochum: we have numbers. Only German and Arabic count same. The orientation thinking style. Chicks look at the food right Armenian latest alphabet "k" has the value of nine side see right food and left see left food but left send the thousand. The longest number in Romanic was 3888 information to the right side of the brain and they eat (MMMDCCCLXXXVIII).Our aim to show how difficult was counting before and how difficult is to teach in German small food. Because they thought on the left side got and Arabic languages. After zero was founded and more food. According to this survey our brain functions transferred from India to Europe become counting easier also like that. than before. As a result we found out that most of The asymmetric writing matches with Latin, Cyrillic civilizations used alphabet to count and than most of them and Greek system, but not matches with Semitic they count from big to small numbers unlike Arabic and languages. Arabic and Hebrew writing system are from German. right to left. So what happen in our brain? Counting in

Index Terms—counting in different languages, Roman, German and Arabic are similar. Written from left to right German, Arabic, Indian numerals, counting with the but speak from right to left. fingers. Scientist at UCL (University College London) have discovered the area of the brain linked to dyscalculia, a math learning disability. The finding shows that there is a I. INTRODUCTION separate function in the brain used for counting that is essential for diagnosis and an understanding of why When we teach German mostly we have difficulties to many people struggle with mathematics. teach counting. In our survey we found out that not only Germans counting from small to big but also Arabs. In II. GERMAN LANGUAGE other languages we couldn’t find this similarity. To say 21 (twenty one) must say first one and twenty (ein und The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo- zwanzig). In Arabic also same logic: wahidwaishrun (one European language family spoken natively by a and twenty) [1]. In Turkish we count from big to small. population of approximately 500 million people mainly In Hebrew they put ‘and’ when they count after twenty. in North America, Oceania, Central Europe, western and They write from right to left like Arabs but they don’t Northern Europe. There are West, North and East count from small to big. Germans use this counting since Germanic. North Germanic languages are Norwegian, 4000 years ago. Many civilizations were using letters to Danish, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese. count, but this method made them counting limited. The East Germanic branch included Gothic, The Armenian language has 36 letters and the latest Burgundian and Vandalic. All of East Germanic letters is “k” and got value of 9000 and there was also no languages are death. The last to die off was Crimean zero in old system (Fig. 1). Gothic, spoken in the late 18th century in some isolated Armenian numerals areas of Crimea. German belong to west Germanic ԱA 1ԲB 2ԳG 3ԴD 4ԵE 5ԶZ 6Էē 7Ըə 8Թt 9 languages (German, English, Friesic, Dutch).[2] Ժž10ԻI 20ԼL 30ԽX 40ԾC 50ԿK 60ՀH 70ՁJ 80 In Old High German diutis means people wise. From Ղł90Ճč 100ՄM 200ՅY 300ՆN 400Շš 500ՈO 600 this word developed the word Deutsch which means Չč700ՊP 800Ջǰ900Ռṙ1000ՍS 2000ՎV 3000ՏT German language. It’s spoken primarily in Germany, Austria, major part of Switzerland, Lichtenstein, 4000 Luxembourg, the Südtirol (South Tyrol) region of Italy ՐR 5000Ցc 6000ՒW 7000Փp8000Քk9000 the Opole Voivodship of Poland, parts of Belgium, parts Figure 1. Armenian letters and numeral values of Romania, the Alsace (Elsass) region of France and parts of Denmark. Additionally, several former colonial possessions of these countries, such as Namibia in Africa, have sizable German – speaking populations. There are German – speaking minorities in several eastern Manuscript received December 28, 2014; revised July 25, 2015.

European countries including Russia, and in the United III. ROMANCE LANGUAGES States as well as countries in South America like Romance languages sometimes called Latin languages Argentina. Over 120 Million people speak German as are modern languages that evolved from spoken Latin their native language. German is the third most popular between sixth and ninth centuries A.D. and thus form a foreign language thought worldwide, and the second branch of the Italic languages within Indo-European most popular in Europe. Italian language belongs to Indo-European language If you are an English speaker unfamiliar with German, family. Latin was the language of Roman Empire. you may be surprised to learn that English and German Today, more than 800 million people are native are closely related languages and share many words that speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe and Americas. are very similar. For example: Additionally, the major Romance languages have many This week, my father is with my brother in the city non-native speakers and use as a lingua francas. This is Diese Woche ist mein Vater mit meinem Bruder in der especially the case for French. Central, North and West Stadt Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius use French language. Note also the general similarity of sentence structure The five most widely spoken romance languages by with English. The only real difference in the German is number of native speakers are Spanish (410 million), that the verb is moved forward in the sentence. However, Portuguese (216 million), French (75 million), Italian (60 there are many German sentences in which a verb form is million) and Romanian (25 million). There are around 57 the last word in the sentence. There are eight basic Million speakers Italian. [4] grammatical functions: case, gender, number, tense, To count before they use each letters maximum three person, mood, voice and comparison. times to count and more than three times they didn’t use. German has genders every noun is masculine, For example: to say 83 LXXXIII must write the character feminine or neuter (der, die, das). looks like that. Because they didn’t have zeroed counting Germans count from left to right and they put “and” and had got limit to count. Multiply, divide, minus and between two numbers after twenty. After hundred plus was difficult. After zero enter Europe counting become opposite little bit. First speak hundred and then become easier than before. one and twenty (hunderteinundzwanzig) or Counting from one to ten not change so much, but zweihundertfünfundsechzig (265) [3]. after ten become like German and English. They speak When we count in German over thousand, it’s also First one and then ten (undici). It means they count first different than English or other languages. English use small numbers and then big. After sixteen it changes to counting same like German until 19 from small to big. ten seven (diciassette) until twenty. In German they Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen etc. Before they said also one count after thirteen (dreizehn) until twenty first small and twenty: an andtwentig, but later on it changed to then big numbers. It continues until hundred from small twenty one. For example: 1995 to big counting. (neunzehnhundertfünfundneunzig) it means 19 hundred Celtic influence can be found in the system of five and ninety or they can say also counting in French. In the most French speaking tausendneunhundertfünfundneunzig. When we say countries there are no words for 70, 80 and 90. Instead for 70 to 79 they combine tens with tens. Soixantedix thirteen “dreizehn” after entering Romanic counting into (70), soixantedix at onze (71), soixante-douze (72). 80 to Indo-Germanic even writing this number XIII first ten 89 combine the number 4 with the numbers 20 and one. and then three but pronounce was like that IIIX. For example in French 80 is 4 20s. 81 is 4 20s plus one Fünfhundertfünfunddreißig (535) and so forth. The current number symbols were brought into For numbers 90 to 99 they combine the numbers 4 and Western culture from India via Arabia. They reached 20 and 10. For example: 90 is four 20s plus 10 (quatre- Italy 1200, Germany 1500. (Fig. 2) vingt- dix). 91 is four 20s plus eleven (quatre-vingt-onze). 11 to 29 German numerals [5] elf 11 Roman numeral zwölf 12 einundzwanzig 21 dreizehn 13 zweiundzwanzig 22 vierzehn 14 dreiundzwanzig 23 fünfzehn 15 vierundzwanzig 24 sechzehn 16 fünfundzwanzig 25 siebzehn 17 sechsundzwanzig 26 achtzehn 18 siebenundzwanzig 27 neunzehn 19 achtundzwanzig 28 zwanzig 20 neunundzwanzig 29

Figure 2. Counting in German language

To say in Romanic fifty must write L and to write 49 they are called the Hindu-Arabic or Indo-Arabic must be XLIX. It means must minus on the left numbers numerals. from big number on the right. On the right sight symbols Before the Arabs also using letters for counting and must be added. (Fig. 3) each letter have a numeric value. Alif first letter in Arabic has a value 1 and the letter ghayn biggest value uno 1 equal to 1000.Let us count in jafr and abjad. The word Allah got value 66 (1+30+30+5) one alif two times l due 2 undici 11 andone hemze makes 66 [8]. This kind of numeral values tre 3 dodici 12 makes two kind of system to guess the events in the past quattro 4 tredici 13 or future. We call it jafr and abjad. To use letters value through counting each word like in Arabic for the cinque 5 quattordici 14 knowing the future (jafr and abjad) existed also in other sei 6 quindici 15 religions and cultures. But in Islam actually is not allowed that kind of metaphysic calculation [9]. Because sette 7 diciotto 18 according to Islam the future knows only Allah. Koran: otto 8 diciannove 19 Neml 27/65. Say, "None in the heavens and earth knows nove 9 venti 20 the unseen except Allah, and they do not perceive when they will be resurrected." [10] dieci 10 ventono 21 The explanation of the verses of the Qur’an according Figure 3. Roman numeral table to the technique of abjad is not fully appropriate to Islam. Jafr and abjad are a kind of words-numeral games. (Fig. IV. ARABIC LANGUAGE 4) Arabic language is the biggest Semitic language with Arabic letters and numbers approximately 202 Million Speaker s. It’s widely spoken by North Africans, Arabic Peninsula, Middle East and Language Island in central Asians. It’s developed from Aramaic alphabet. [7] Arabic is Classical Arabic language of 6th century and its modern descendants excluding Maltese. Arabic belongs to Afro-asiatic family. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to Aramaic, Hebrew, Ugaritic and Phoenician. Arabic has influenced many languages around the world throughout history. Some of the most influenced languages are: Urdu, Turkish, Malay, Bosnian, Swahili, Persian, Kurdish, Somali, Indonesian, Tagalog, Pashto, Panjabi, Kazakh, Hindi, Tigrinya, Sindhi and Housa. Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Counting from small to big in Arabic can be explained in the writing system because they write from right to left. In Arabs got difficulties to count until they learned Figure 4. Arabic alphabet, numbers and numeral values how to use zero. Sıfır meansnil or zero in Arabic. This word entered German language “Ziffer” and it means V. COUNTING WITH THE FINGERS digit or numbers. InTurkish we use “şifre” and means password. Brahmagupta mentioned in his book In ancient Rome start counting using the little finger of “Siddhanta” digit until nine and zero and counting rules. the left hand. In ancient Rome and in the middle ages, 773 Indian Astronomer Kankah came to Khalif el bending the left little finger was 1. May be the reason for Mansur palace with this book “Siddhanta”. Immediately using the left hand was that the right hand was used for they translated in to Arabic language as a “Sindhind”. more important things. Also bending the little finger is Zero means for Indian language “sunya” not exists and difficult. Yet we don’t know the reason for its use. As the Arabs put the name “es-sıfır” means empty. Nil or zero time advanced, people began to communicate 1using the in Indian means also empty and in Malay language also index finger in China and Japan, using the thumb in got two meaning “kosong” means empty and zero [6]. Germany and France, and using the little finger in the El Khwarizmi developed this counting system in 8th Philippines, etc. century. So they introduced to Europe to make counting The French start counting with their thumb and easier through zero. European calls it Arabic numbers when you order something using your fingers can make and Arabs call it Indian numbers. In academic circles the waiter misunderstanding. For example: if you want to

order 2 teas showing your index and middle fingers. That According to the survey Turkish, Chinese, Korean and means you want three teas. Because even you close your Japanese learn easier Mathematic due their easy counting thumb they count the thumb also. and number systems. Across the world there are 27 types of counting method using the fingers. Counting using the fingers REFERENCES differs according to region, ethnicity and historical period. [1] T. GülerdiSatır and M. Ali KılayAraz, Imam and Preacher High 11 Schools Grade 9 Vocational Arabic Lessons, MEB Press. Ankara Using index finger to show something in Malaysia 2014, pp. 63. consider rude. You must show with your thumb. But to [2] H. Bussmann, Dictionary of Linguistics, Alfred Kröner Press. 4th Edition. Stuttgart, 2008, pp. 127, pp. 311. counting in Malay culture start with index finger. [3] S. Durmuş and A. Grillo, “Dafis great,” Lehrbuch A1. 1.1., Stil Matbaacılık, Istanbul 2013, pp. 22. VI. CONCLUSION [4] A. Uzağan, Turkish- Malay Conversation Book, First edition, Van, 2010, pp. 47. Counting is a cultural technique that is acquired of life [5] O. Coşkun, D. Gündüzalp, and B. Aydın, Cache-Cache 1. Cahier by the most children in the first four years, and it d’activités (hide and seek 1, activity not book) A1.1. MEBPress, Ankara, 2014, pp. 51. universally relies on the use of body parts, most often the [6] B. Said Nursi, The Words, Risale-I Nur Collection, RNK, İstanbul fingers. 2009, pp. 390. Finger counting has been documented in almost all [7] R. Yazçiçek, “Bilgi değeri açisindan cefrve ebced–harflerve cultures and present and past, making the hand the rakamlar metafiziği,” –Jafr and Abjad from the Point of Value of Knowledge: The Metaphysics of Letters and Numbers. “earliest calculating machine”. The word digit comes [8] H. Akarsu (Translator) and B. Said Nursi, The Words, Risale-iNur from Latin and means finger or toe. But today the Collection, First Published by RNK.6th edition, İstanbul 2009, pp. meaning the numerals that can be combined with others 390. to write larger numbers, and that cannot be itself split [9] R. Yazçiçek, “Jafr and abjad from the point of value of knowledge: into other numerals (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9). [12] the metaphysics of letters and numbers,” Milelve Nihal, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 75-114, 2004. By learning German counting in German language [10] A. R. M. I. A. I. Rassoul (Translater), “Al Qur’an Al karim,” make students quite confused and not easy to teach them. Neml(ant) 27/65. 23, Auflage, IB Verlag Islamische Bibliothek Especially it happens after the number twenty they 2000, pp. 502. [11] Y. Nishiyama, “Counting with the fingers” International Journal always confused, because must speak first small numbers of Applied Mathematics, vol. 85, no. 5, pp. 859-868, 2013. and then big numbers. Additionally have to put ‘and’. In [12] O. Lindemann, A. Alipour, and M. H. Fischer, “Finger counting many languages are except Arabic not like that. Instead habits in middle eastern and western individuals: an online to say 234 (zweihundertvierunddreissig), they can be survey,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2011. irritated and saying zweihundertdreiundvierzig (243). Romanic numerals as a letters they still teaching in the Abdulkerim Uzağan was born in Yayladağı, schools, but not other languages such as Arabic, Turkey on 01.08.1965.He received his degree Armenian or Hebrew. It is suggested to teach pupils and from Çukurova University, Education Faculty students as part of general knowledge. -Department of German Teaching Adana For some cultures got numbers that they find it Turkey, 1988, Master degree from Gazi University Education Faculty Department of unlucky numbers. For example 13 for European brings German Teaching, Ankara, Turkey, 1995, and unlucky. Some activity they avoid to do on 13th of PhD degree from University of Bielefeld Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies month. Jesus Christ 13th follower Judais Iscariots was in the last supper betrayer. In Italy number 13 is lucky Linguistics Department, Bielefeld Germany, 1999. number, because it is associated with the ‘Great He started to work 1989 at Yüzüncüyıl University as a assistant for Goddess’, who is responsible for fertility and lunar German language and literature in Van Turkey. 1989 and 1994he went cycles. Many Italians believe 13 bring prosperity and life to Germany Schwaebisch-Hall and Munich for language course through and it is seen as especially lucky when gambling. But 17 Goethe Institute scholarship for two months. 1995 he finished his master degree and went through scholarship of higher education of is unlucky. When viewed as the Roman numeral XVII, it Turkey for PhD. to Germany. After he finished his Military service 16 is then changed anagrammatically to VIXI, which in months as a lieutenant for air force defense in Gebze Kocaeli Turkey Latin languages translate ‘I have lived’ means I am death 2001 he continued to work at his previous university. 2002 he went to or my live is over (Vixerunt). In Italy there is no 17th Malaysia and worked there four years at University Malaya and floor. Hotels do not have a room 17and so on.13 for University Tun Hussein Onn as a lecturer for German language. 2007 th and 2008 he was working as a teacher for German in Lefke High school Hebrew unlucky because 13 letter is m and remember Cyprus and Cağaloğlu High school in Istanbul. 2009 he became ‘mavet’ means death. assistant professor at Yüzüncüyıl University Faculty of literary studies Similar have Chinese, for them unlucky numbers is 4. German language and literature department. Since 2010 he is the head of department. He is member of Germanist Association in Turkey

Some apartments owned by Chinese got floor 3A and 3B (Gerder) and also International Germanistik Verein (IVG). His PhD: but nothing 4 to avoid using number 4 because 4 is fiction and reality in novel trilogy “the thrones fall” from Bruno Brehm. remembering death. 5 and 6 also considered for Chinese Research interests: Linguistics, comparative linguistics, contemporary unlucky numbers, but also lucky numbers. German literature.