Devanagari int literals [was Re: Should non-security 2.7 bugs be fixed?]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tuesday 21 July 2015 13:30, Rustom Mody wrote:

> BTW my boys have just mailed me their latest:
> 
>>>> 九.九九
> 
> 9.99
> 
> Can some unicode/Chinese literate person inform me whether
> that ideograph is equivalent to roman '9' or roman 'nine'?
> 

I don't speak or read Chinese, so I could be completely wrong, but my 
understanding is that Chinese does not distinguish between the numeral 9 and 
the word 'nine', they are both spelled the same, 九. I think that the 
distinction you are looking for doesn't really exist in Chinese.

However, 90 would not be written as nine-zero, 九零, but as nine-ten 九十. 
Ninety-one, I believe, would be written as nine-ten-nine: 九十一.

Decimal numbers, however, copy the European usage: 91.1 = 九一.一.

See also:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals


-- 
Steve