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Is it possible, without any context, to tell whether 一二三 means "one, two,
three" or "one hundred twenty-three"?

In English, this kind of ambiguity would be removed by adding spaces between
each digit: "1 2 3".

Is this even an issue in Japanese?
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2014-03-24T15:18:03.273
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translation readings numbers
Does 一二三 mean "1 2 3" or "123"?
Without context, I would say it's one hundred twenty three. "One, two, three"
would probably look like `一・二・三`, or some other common delimiter.
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2014-03-24T15:23:04.467
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Japanese-speaker here.

"One hundred twenty-three" = 百二十三

"One, two, three" = 一二三 or 一、二、三
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When you only see 一二三, the context always matters. (As you may know, Japanese
language generally rely very much on the context to decide the meaning.)

You use 百二十三 kind of way only when you want to specify that numbers are like
"one hundred twenty-three". This kind of expressions however tends to be
redundant (二億三千五百九十五万三千百四十五=235,953,445). So you usually write 一二三 or
二三五、九五三、四四五 especially these days.

For your information, These KANJI numbers generlly used when you write
vertically and when you write horizontally you generally use degits.
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2014-03-24T18:57:53.390
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Numbers written with Arabic numerals are usually **positional**. The place
value of each digit depends on its position in the sequence:

> **1** _b_ 2 + **2** _b_ 1 + **3** _b_ 0 = **123**

Numbers written with kanji are typically **non-positional**. Although they
usually appear in the same order, rather than use position alone to indicate
their place value, they're generally combined with characters like 百 or 万,
while zeroes are left unwritten. (Some numerals, like 十, 百, [and
千](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/14845/1478) can appear as numbers
without being preceded by 一.) So, as Tokyo Nagoya says, _one hundred and
twenty three_ would be written:

> 百二十三

This is interpreted as:

> **100** + **2** × **10** + **3** = **123**

However, this is only **typically** true. There are a number of situations in
which kanji are used as a **positional** numeral system. For example, you
might find a receipt that says `一二三円`, meaning "one hundred and twenty three
yen". Or you might find a reference to page one hundred and twenty three in
the index of a book written with kanji:

![Picture of index from a 漢和辞典 illustrating 一二三 meaning
123](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gUIm6.jpg)

In other contexts, the kanji 一二三 might be used to write the name
[一二三{ひふみ}](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8A%A0%E8%97%A4%E4%B8%80%E4%BA%8C%E4%B8%89).

The truth is, you'll have to use your common sense to figure out what 一二三
means in a particular context. Is it a name, a listing like "one, two, three",
or a number like "one hundred and twenty three"? Without context, it's
impossible to say for sure--even if we can make a reasonable guess.

Let's talk about English for a moment. If I asked you what the word _bear_
meant, you might think I was referring to [a type of
animal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear). But without context, you'd have no
idea whether I was asking about the noun or [the
verb](http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bear)--and there's
no way to pick one meaning or the other, even if a particular meaning is more
likely or comes to mind first. In short, context is required.
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