why is the beginning on the left and the end on the right?

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• Visstix@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s because of the tools used to write a language. Some languages were written with a brush so go top to bottom. Some were written with a chisel so they go right to left.

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  • leraje@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    TIL, thank you.

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  • grandel@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    How come? Is chiseling easier from right to left?

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    • null@piefed.nullspace.lol ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      If you’re right-handed, which most people are, then yes.

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• JoeTheSane@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  sigh I thought this was a riddle for a good while before I read the past the title.

  Image

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• litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Approximately 90% of people are right-handed. In European writing systems that use quills and pens, left-to-right makes more sense so that you can hold the pen in your right hand and drag it rightward, not into the ink you just laid down.

  In East Asia, before writing on paper was a thing, they wrote using inscribed bone, but then eventually moved to vertical wood boards, bound together by string. Each character on the board would be ready from top-to-bottom, and then move to the next board. The most logical choice for a right handed person is to stack the wood pile on their left, and use their right hand to draw the next board to meet their gaze, then set it down on their right. For this reason, the historical writing system common to China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam for centuries was read right-to-left. But the native Korean script is left-to-right, as is the modern Vietnamese script. And Chinese and Japanese in the 20th Century switched to left-to-right. And yet, Japanese books are still ordered “backwards” so that the title page is what Westerners would say is the back of the book, and manga panels are read from the right side toward the left.

  It all boils down to right handedness, but it depends on whether your hand is moving, or the page is moving.

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  • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Do you know why arabic languages are right to left?

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• TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s arbitrary. Hebrew and Arabic write right to left, for example, and other things go the other way too such as computer UIs

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  • ccunning@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Arabic is right to left, but interestingly the place values of numbers are still left to right from highest to lowest

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• palordrolap@fedia.io ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Additional to other answers, back in the early days of alphabetic writing, some writings alternated left to right then back again right to left on alternating lines. This is called "boustrophedon", literally "(as the) ox walk(s)" because it's the same way oxen are used to plough fields.

  There's documented evidence of both early Latin and Greek being written this way. What's less clear is which direction they chose to start those writings.

  The problem with that is that you have to learn to read both directions. They often wrote the letters backwards when text went the other way, which came with its own set of problems. You probably don't have a mirror. You basically have to learn to write almost twice as many symbols. Some letters are their own reflection and you can't always tell which way something was written. etc. etc.

  Eventually someone influential will have chosen the direction for presumably a good reason (to them) and everyone else eventually followed suit.

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• Witchfire@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s fairly arbitrary. Many languages write right to left, and some even write up and down

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  • alina@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Well, you’re right. Now I’m wondering if cultures that write differently imagine the beginning and end differently, and if this is connected at all

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    • Timecircleline@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Absolutely. If you learn about visual hierarchy in design, one of the first things that you learn is that those who have language that read from left to right will instinctively look at the top left, across, and top to bottom, in kind of an “F” pattern.

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    • mushroommunk@lemmy.today ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      This is the kind of stuff Etymology_nerd talk about on YouTube.

      That and how Gorbachev is responsible for Skibidi Toilet

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• Arcanoloth@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  AFAIK Just the way it turned out (and then was applied to more and more things). Others write top to bottom or even left to right on odd lines and right to left on even ones (boustrophedon, “as the ox plows”).

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  • dbx12@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thanks for this wonderfully odd fun fact.

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