> All world languages are a deviation from Arabic<p>Spouse of a linguist here. That is absolutely not true. To summarize a LOT, there are multiple languages that share common roots, which linguists classify into language "families". If you go to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_families#Spoken_language_families" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_families#Spok...</a> and sort the list by number of current speakers (which adds up to far more than the population of the world because so many people speak two or more languages), you'll find the top five language families are Indo-European (which includes most European languages, including English), Sino-Tibetan (which includes Chinese), Atlantic-Congo (which includes Bantu and many other languages spoken in Africa, most of which you probably won't have heard of unless you're a linguist or you live in Africa), Afroasiatic (which includes Arabic), and Austronesian (which includes Tagalog, which you might know by the name Filipino).<p>It might be possible to claim that the Afroasiatic languages are all derived from Arabic, but the only influence that the Arabic language has had on Indo-European languages such as English is via loanwords (like algebra, for example). This does not make English a derivative of Arabic any more than Japanese (which has borrowed several English words such as カメラ, "kamera", from camera) is a derivative of English. Borrowing a word, or even a few dozen words, from another language does not make it a derivative. English, while it gleefully borrows loanwords from <i>everywhere</i>, is derived from French and German (or, to be more accurate, from Anglo-Norman and Proto-Germanic).
Can I also add that "Arabic numbers" - the numbers we use today, are actually of Indian origin, the Arabs translated the Indian logic/math texts into Arabic, and Western society used the Arabic translations (and additions like those of "Algorithm")<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_s...</a>
I have it on consumer-grade authority that the Indians got them in turn from the Shang dynasty, decimal since ca.1200BCE. Thus proving conclusively that numeral systems naturally travel <i>deasil</i>. Ne'er let thine diʒits, goe <i>widdershins</i>.
Also as long as we are going down the terminology nerd rabbit hole: it's Arabic numerals, not numbers. Numbers refers to the abstract concept, numerals refers to the method one uses to write them down.
Yeah - I quoted that to show that it was normal usage rather than technical correctness - I also did the same for the name that I didn't have the correct spelling for as I wrote the comment - not sure if I should update it (with your input) or to leave it and let people work down the thread
it's a cardinal rule
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