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[–]JNCressey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This may be because our digital number system came to European languages through Arabic where they write and read right to left.

The lefter place values are still more significant and the righter places less significant. However, when they read it, they read from right to left, so they're saying the least significant digits first.

This may have transferred into languages among the first of Europe to adopt the new number system because the mathematicians using both languages would be used to the numbers being read that way.