Re: Interesting Brain/Language Nugget of Info

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, John Cowan wrote:

> Ed Heil scripsit:
>
> > The vast vast majority of vowelless scripts write right-to-left.
> >
> > The vast vast majority of scripts with vowels write left-to-right.
>
> I think the standard view, that this is essentially a coincidence,
> is correct.  The alphabet developed at a certain time and place,
> and was not independently reinvented elsewhere (unlike syllabic and
> morpho-syllabic writing); it happened to descend from a vowelless
> script.
>
> RTL vs LTR reflects the way right-handers inscribe on stone or wood,
> and write with pen and ink, respectively.  Normally the left hand
> holds the chisel and the right hand the hammer, so it is natural
> to start at the right end and work leftwards.  Right-handed writing
> with a pen, though, is more easily done LTR, so that the letters are
> not hidden or smudged.
>
> Of the 65 scripts on the Unicode Roadmap, a mere 9 are RTL, and only
> one of these (Arabic script) is at all widely used.
Hebrew isn't widely used?  What exactly do you mean by "widely used"?  And
what, in fact, is the Unicode Roadmap?

The ink vs. chisel story sounds nice, and all, but it hardly holds up.
Runic alphabets, designed to be carved into stone, are usually (not
exclusively) read LTR. And hebrew, as far as I know, has been written with
ink for a loooong time.  (And, incidently, it isn't really all *that* hard
to write RTL -- what's hard is making the switch after an hour and a half
of Hebrew class back to writing "backwards.")

Of course, making a decision might be tricky; we have only a small sample
size, and unfrotunately many vowelless  writing systems come from the same
family of languages, so proving causality might be tricky.