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Cyrillic numerals was a numbering system derived from the Cyrillic alphabet, used by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in Russia as late as the 1700s when Peter the Great replaced it with the Arabic system.
The system was quasi-decimal, based on Ionic numeral system and written with the corresponding graphemes of the Cyrillic alphabet. A separate letter was assigned to each unit (1, 2, ... 9), each tens (10, 20, ... 90), and each hundreds (100, 200, ... 900). The numbers were written as pronounced—mostly left to right with an exception of numbers 11 through 19. These numbers are pronounced and written right to left. For example, 17 is pronounced sem-na-dzat ("seven-over-ten", compare English seven-teen). In order to convert Cyrillic number to Arabic one had to sum all the figures. To distinguish numbers from text, a titlo was drawn over the numbers. If the number exceeded 1000, the thousands sign ҂ was drawn before the figure.
Examples:
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Slavic-numerals-1706.jpg
Image:Slavic-numerals-1706.jpg
- 1706
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Slavic-numerals-7118.jpg
Image:Slavic-numerals-7118.jpg
- 7118 (year from Creation equivalent to 1610 CE)
Glagolitic numerals worked similarly, except numeric values were assigned according to the native alphabetic order of the Glagolitic alphabet, rather than inherited from the order of the Greek alphabet.
See also
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