> One of my classmates is an native-born Israeli and he was explaining the > other day that Hebrew & Arabic are derived from the same proto-language > and read right-to-left because that's the best way to carve letters into stone > tablets. > > European languages, including English, are written left-to-right so the > copyist's sleeve won't smudge the still wet ink.
doesn't work - European scripts are derived from Latin, derived from Greek, derived from Phoenician etc. and long predate the use of ink. There's no suggestion that people changed direction just because they were getting their sleeves inky. People used cuneiform before they carved letters into stone. Cuneiform is stamped with wedges into soft pottery, then fired for permanence, so the stone carving idea doesn't hold up either. There's probably no particular reason why one direction was used rather than any other. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
