Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Rename ar-numeral to ar-cardinal ?/reply (5)

Things with numbers and numerals are kind of confused, and they were a rather contentious issue for a long time. No consensus could be reached and so things were left in an indeterminate state with multiple conflicting uses of terms and categories. For example, there were "numeral", "number", "cardinal numeral", "cardinal number", "ordinal number" and "ordinal numeral" categories all containing similar entries, with different languages using different names.

Now, we've settled on this situation:
 * "Numeral" is considered a part of speech, and contains all (cardinal) number terms that are not clearly members of another part of speech. These entries receive the ===Numeral=== header.
 * All cardinal number terms, regardless of part of speech, go in the "cardinal numbers" category.
 * All ordinal number terms, regardless of part of speech (although they are generally adjectives), go in the "ordinal numbers" category.
 * Symbols for numbers, such as 1, 2, 10, 12 go in the "numeral symbols" category. These entries receive the ===Symbol=== header. (For languages like Chinese, there's not a clear distinction here because all symbols stand for concepts. There's little difference in Chinese between the word for the number 1, and the symbol for it.)

I hope that clears things up some.