|---- |maalis |---- | |Together in house, etc.|---- |maalitl |---- | +-----------------------+-------------+--------------+--------------+ Variation in numeral forms such as is exhibited in the above tables is not confined to any one quarter of the globe; but it is more universal among the British Columbian Indians than among any other race, and it is a more characteristic linguistic peculiarity of this than of any other region, either in the Old World or in the New.

It was to some extent employed by the Aztecs,[142] and its use is current among the Japanese; in whose language Crawfurd finds fourteen different classes of numerals "without exhausting the list."[143] In examining the numerals of different languages it will be found that the tens of any ordinary decimal scale are formed in the same manner as in English.

Twenty is simply 2 times 10; 30 is 3 times 10, and so on.

The word "times" is, of course, not expressed, any more than in English; but the expressions briefly are, 2 tens, 3 tens, etc.

But a singular exception to this method is presented by the Hebrew, and other of the Semitic languages.
In Hebrew the word for 20 is the plural of the word for 10; and 30, 40, 50, etc.