Which countries read right to left

Therefore, knowing the writing direction can be relevant to estimating the work involved to create web pages in a new language. Languages don't have a direction. Scripts have a writing direction, and so languages written in a particular script, will be written with the direction of that script. Languages can be written in more than one script. For example, Azeri can be written in any of the Latin, Cyrillic, or Arabic scripts.

When written in the Arabic script, it is written right-to-left. If a language can be written in more than one script, which script should a web designer or localizer use, or should the text be provided in all scripts? The answer will depend on your target audience. The script may change for different countries or regions.

The script may also change by legislation or with changes in government policy. For example, to reach the Azeri-speaking population in Iran, you would use Arabic script. From the late s, Cyrillic was the script of choice in Azerbaijan itself and became policy in There are many types of writing systems, also called a script.

A great many use an alphabet , which uses symbols letters to represents the sounds phonemes of that language. One of the oldest writing systems dating back to around b. It began as pictographs —picture-like symbols representing objects—and evolved into the wedge-like cuneiform. Many Native American languages, such as Cree, use a syllabary.

Japanese uses syllabic characters and characters based on Chinese. Chinese uses a partly logographic and phonetic writing system. A logograph , also called a logogram , is a symbol that represents an entire word.

Yet other languages, like Hindi, uses a script called Devanagari , which blends alphabetic and syllabic elements. English uses the Latin alphabet, which was used by the ancient Romans.

The Latin alphabet is principally descended from the Greek alphabet, in turn from the Phoenician alphabet and Egyptian hieroglyphs before it. The whole document layout will have to be mirrored flipped horizontally to match the requirements of languages read right to left. Everything located on the right portion of the document will have to be placed on the left. There are 7 billion potential clients in the world, and excluding the localization process for Middle Eastern markets as an example of a home to languages read right to left will cut this number to a fraction.

Related post. Recent Post. Leave a reply. Right to left languages are more geographically concentrated in the Middle East, however, where people used stone tablets. Presumably, right to left made more sense for this method, assuming most people are right-handed which an estimated 90 percent of the world population is , because they would be holding the tablet with their left hand and thus obstructing the left side.

Most languages in the world are written from left to right. This is the case for any language using the Latin alphabet, as well as Cyrillic, Greek and various Southeast Asian writing systems. Believe it or not, English came pretty close to being a right to left language.

Back in the day, Old English was written in the runic alphabet, a writing system that ran right to left in its earliest iterations. Eventually, though, the Latin alphabet replaced runes, reversing the directionality.