Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:

> Carsten Becker skrev:
>
> > [1] This raises a question: The Proto-Semitics, were they
> > mostly left-handed, or why are semitic languages written
> > from right to left? It would be more natural for a
> > left-handed person. I guess left-to-right became the
> > standard direction in Europe because most people are right
> > handed and writing is easier for them that way.
>
> I've seen the right-to-left direction claimed to be
> an inheritance from pictographic writing.  When a
> right-handed person draws a person or an animal they
> tend to draw them looking leftwards, and that determined
> the direction of writing.
I read somewhere that *all* directional writing systems started out
right-to-left or top-to-bottom, suggesting some basic asymmetry in (most)
people's perception of space. Left-to-right systems have, supposedly, all
arisen from either a RTL system being reversed (sometimes via boustrophedon),
or a TTB system being tilted 90 degrees to the left (I think this happened to
cuneiform).

Can't vouch for the accuracy of this - perhaps someone knows of counterexamples?

(I assume that alphabets that are but modifications of older ones, and inherited
their direction of writing, do not count.)

                                                     Andreas