“Would you please write down your name and phone number here??”, I looked at the paper, OK it’s an Arabic written form. I looked at the rows filled by others, names: Arabic letters, phone numbers: those Hindu numbers!. I looked behind me “Oh boy it seems they will wait for a while!”. You see I was going to write my 10 digits mobile number (in Egypt) and I think for a minute to visualize the number(shape) in my head and another minute to write(draw) it. No it’s not a story about my most embarrassing moment, I want to ban using these frigging numbers in any Arabic country!!!
Why? Because 1234567890 is our ARABIC-numeral system and these other stuff used in the official papers are the Hindu numbers or as named now Hindu-Arabic numbers(since we use them so much!). Check this (Arabic Numerals) and this (Hindu-Arabic Numerals).
Please stop using these Hindu numbers…I spent couple of minutes trying to remember the song they used to teach us in kindergarten “الواحد واقف مظبوط والأثنين بتبص عليه والثلاثة ثلاث سنَّات ….ألخ” then I realized I spent too much time thinking(singing)…I scratched the drawings and wrote my phone number in Arabic!!!
