Languages which read right to left

It would be easier for someone to write top to bottom with one hand holding the paper. 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. The two most well-known right to left languages are Arabic and Hebrew, which share a common linguistic ancestor in the Aramaic alphabet. Persian, Sindhi and Urdu all use adapted forms of the Arabic alphabet. It is said that Moses used stone tablets for Ten Commandments. The problem is that this medium of writing involved a risk of personal injury if the writer was to carve from left to right. Since most individuals are right handed, they would use their right hand to hold and carve with the chisel and the left hand to hold a hammer.

The opposite script direction could have put the writer's hand to danger because it increased the likelihood of them accidently beating their hand with the hammer. For this reason, many ancient languages found right-to-left writing to be more favorable.

Special care for right to left languages In the translation world, these languages have to be handled with care because many translation softwares are not skilled with right-to-left scripts. Knowing the correct script direction is very important for authors and web designers.

This is because languages written from right to left not only require a translation, but also a localisation process to make sure the text directionality is correct. All the elements in the layout also have to be mirrored to ensure the layout flows naturally for the target market. However, not all scripts share the same writing direction. This brings us to our question: what languages are read right to left? What languages are read right to left?

Hebrew is an example of a language read right to left Do some languages have more than one direction? Among the most popular languages read right to left, we can find Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Hebrew.

Some languages can be written in more than one writing system. For example, Traditional Chinese was written in vertical columns which were read from top to bottom. The first column being on the right side of the page and the last column being on the left.

In modern times, however, left-to-right horizontal Chinese has become more popular.