Re: Rating Languages

In a message dated 9/25/01 3:18:47 PM, fortytwo@GDN.NET writes:

<< > Because when you put two Arabic characters together, they never merge
> to form some third character, as happens all the time in Hindi.
Well, there are some ligatures in Arabic.  I'm not sure, tho, of how
common they are in modern printed Arabic. >>

    Oh, excuse me; I seem to have been engaging in...what's it called?  Ah
yes: lying.  ;)  No, but these are really very few--especially compared to
Hindi.  The [h] can be written two ways, and any time you have a character
with the shape of [Z], [H] or [x] (looks like a capital C with a cape flying
off to the left, blowing in the wind) and it comes in clusters, then they
tend to get written vertically, with dots all over the place.  [s] is often
just a line (which can be VERY confusing, I'll admit), and when [m] comes
after the definite article it gets shoved off in the corner.  In print, only
this last change holds, I'm pretty sure; the rest is completely standard
(with some fancy ligatures for laam alif combinations).  Hindi's much more
complex--or, at least, there's a lot more of them, even if they're simple.

-David