Language Directions Around The World
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ต.ค. 2023
- HELP SUPPORT NAME EXPLAIN ON PATREON: / nameexplain
TIKTOK: / nameexplain
INSTAGRAM: / nameexplainyt
FACEBOOK: / 248812236869988
TWITTER: / nameexplainyt
BOOK: bit.ly/originofnames
MERCH: teespring.com/stores/name-exp...
Thank you to all my Patrons for supporting the channel!
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Language Direction: www.babbel.com/en/magazine/ri...
Should Japanese be Horizontal?: www.thoughtco.com/should-japa...
What direction does your language go in?
My language can go both left to right and right to left since Hindi and Urdu are basically the same language, but the scripts are vastly different.
>
Bengali goes left-to-right
Left tô right
Unless I missed it there is also boustrophedon.
In Japanese, vertical writing is used in novels and newspapers but textbooks and almost of all web articles are written horizontally.
That’s right, nowadays horizontal writing became the default. But it is worth keeping in mind that web browsers didn’t have proper stable support for vertical writing for years. Japanese newspaper companies who publish physical paper in vertical writing didn’t _choose_ horizontal writing for the web, they had to make do with what was available. And it stayed that way.
On computer screens everything is horizontally laid out by default, and vertical writing is always a conscious choice against it in a confined window, so I always feel it’s a bit unfair example talking about popularity.
@@user-oc5mw3fe3x Now we're used to read horizontally in web browsing. I couldn't imagine reading articles in vertical way. But paper novels and comics don't seem to fit for horizontal way. I feel it's a little bit weird to use both ways depending on the situation.
i didnt know they write novels top to bottom, i thought that was just manga and novels are written horizontally.
It's literature vs everything else.
as such, japanese translation of western comic book retains horizontal writing
The directionality of east Asian scripts like chinese is not just due to writing on scrolls, but how the scrolls were constructed. Early scrolls in ancient China were constructed of strips of bamboo bound together vertically. Thus each "line" of text was written from top to bottom on one strip.
Theoretically it is possible that the direction is alternating. So in one line its from left to right and in the next line its from right to left. That works best in long lines, when reading you don't have to zake your eyes from the script a go back to the start of the line, you just go down to the next line.
That’s called boustrophedon and it was used in the very early stage of the Greek alphabet
Boustrophedon
@@EnigmaticLucas
Thanks. I couldn't get the whole word together.
@EnigmaticLucas yup. I learned about yhis from my college Latin prof, who also taught Greek. It came up in class bc me,being left-handed, tended to take my notes mirror image, right to left. And I sat on the front row. He happened one day to see my note taking, so our Latin class that day turned into some basics of Greek....side note: it was called boustropedon because it mimicked how cattle graze in a field. Just like the bosphoros is the cattle crossing.
@@HalfEye79 No problem
Now you know the reason why the proper way to read manga is usually from right to left; while the Japanese language itself has changed significantly over the years, nowadays using the Western format of going left to right, the traditional style of top to bottom, right to left has already been so deeply ingrained in Japanese culture that its influence still stands out.
The American influence on Japanese LRTB seems limited to places where the writing space is wider than it's tall like shop signs, and limited to modern media like TV. Print media retained the pre-war TBRL orientation, though apparently not on forms, which may be another American influence.
Keep in mind in Manga, it's not just the pages. Most manga is still very often written TBRL. You'll notice sometimes in English translations the spacing of text in speech bubbles is kind of awkward because it was supposed to be vertical text.
Even though in most text Japanese is written LRTB, TBRL was never abandoned. It's less common but it's definitely still in use and pretty normal today. From what I've heard, same with Chinese, depending on where. Even the few times I've read manga translations into Chinese, they often choose vertical text to match.
In Japanese TB-RL writing is used in the arts and humanities while LR-TB is used in relation to math and sciences. If if you buy a novel or a comic book in Japan it reads the traditional way, while a calculus textbook or a printer's instruction manual will read the Western way.
That blew my mind when my friend was reading manga backwards back in 6th grade.
It is kind of funny. As a modern comic reader, I am quite used to reading comics in both from left to right and right to left.
So sometimes when running into a comic page with no context, like I happen to find a single-page comic on a meme page, I can get confused about with orientation it uses. Both are used and it's not always easy to guess.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Oxturn writing (Boustrophedon). My understanding was that originally in ancient times in the Mediterranean they would alternate directions, as would an ox when plowing a field. Later, this seemed to be standardized in a single direction, with the western languages (Latin, Greek) preferring left to right and the eastern (Arabic, Hebrew) preferring right to left.
I was surprised too ngl
Not only did the writing direction change, but the letters themselves were mirrored when writing in the opposite direction.
If I understand correctly, Ancient Egyptian was not truly boustrophedon, as writing direction wouldn't necessarily change between each line and they would write vertically too, but it's a good example of that mirroring since hieroglyphs would always face the start of the line and will be very visible since the humans and animal hieroglyphs were pictographic. If you write left-to-right every logograph will face left, but they'll face right if you write right-to-left.
If I recall correctly the hieratic script would do the same despite being more abstractified and cursive/
Same, I was waiting for him to mention that but I was disappointed.
or rongoronngo
You can see the result of this in how these alphabets look today, there are e.g Hebrew letters that look a lot like like mirrored versions of Greek lowercase pi and sigma, that make the p and s sounds, showing a common origins between these letters before their orientations were fixed.
There’s also boustrophedon, which is when the lines alternate between LRTB and RLTB.
Very early forms of the Greek script used it.
There is also the ”Fornsvensk” runic script, which doesn’t have a direction but just spirals around the edge and towards the middle at leas on the physical rune stones, but that’s because the stones were used to mark special occasions and are part documentation, part art work and you follow the text follows the image
@@algotkristoffersson15 Ogham did the same actually, usually used to write Old Irish. Often in manuscripts it would be left-to-write, but it was common for it to spiral around the edge towards the middle when carved.
9:16 There's something very interesting that happens with signs in Chinese (and presumably also Japanese and Korean). The languages are traditionally written TBRL, but can also be written LRTB in modern times. In general, vertically oriented signs will usually be written TBRL, and horizontally oriented signs will usually be written LRTB.
However, that is not always the case, and it's entirely reasonable for a horizontal sign to be written TBRL, which an result in a single line that reads from right to left. This is particularly common of signs that are intended to look traditional and of signs that are actually old. For example, the front gate of Chicago's Old Chinatown has what appears to be "公為下天" on the side facing outward and "恥廉義禮" on the side facing inward, both written horizontally in one line, but both are intended to be read from right to left because they are TBRL and therefore actually read "天下為公" ("the world belongs to the public", a quote from Confucius's Book of Rites) and "禮義廉恥" (the four social bonds, "propriety, justice, integrity and honor," from the anonymously written Guanzi).
The Empire of Japan once used both TBRL and RLTB. You can see newspaper titles at that time were written in RLTB. After WWII, Japan abandoned RLTB and shifted into LRTB. So Japanese language has experienced three writing directions: TBRL, RLTB, and LRTB.
Egyptian hieroglyphs direction of reading is determined by which way the hieroglyphs are facing.
Read towards the faces of the people/animals, the next line down will swap direction. Unless it's a cartouche, then it may just be top to bottom. IIRC anyway. I have a great book on it!
Arabic calligraphy: You dare confine me to your systems?
About cuneiform being Left->Right or Top->Bottom: Originally, it was written Top->Bottom.
I'm guessing that as most people are right-handed, they were starting to write from right-hand side(no pun intended).
But at some time, they decided that it was easier to write it horizontally.
To make it less confusing to read, they rotated the symbols 90° counter-clockwise when writing. That's probably when it went from TBRL to LRTB.
Feel free to correct me, I'm simply someone who is curious about such things.
I'm waiting for you to talk about boustrophedon.
Tolkien's Sarati -- glyphs for a universal phonetic script -- can be written in whatever direction you want.
This topic is actually very interesting and less talked about. Looking forward for more like this 😊
Japanese pre-WW2 wrote horizontal right-to-left too in many cases.
I’m trying to learn Vietnamese as an English speaker
Mr Simpson if you want to off yourself, we also sell handguns
Ok
good luck
Giờ học thế nào rồi?
its definitely possible to mix directions with themselves too. the Gallifreyan alphabet is written on counterclockwise circles to form words, and those words are arranged counterclockwise in a bigger circle. whole paragraphs are also enclosed in bigger circles and arranged the same way to form much larger texts. its like directionality inception
The Ogham writing in the Old Irish went LRBT, and used boustrophedon as well.
Chinese, Korean, and Japanese actually can be written in four ways: right to left>up to down. up to down>right to left, up to down>left to right. left to right > up to down. basically traditionally it's right to left but can be written vertically or horizontally, horizontally for door plaques and other thing requiring wider than tall writing, , vertically for books. but then western influence added the left to right direction was introduced.
I don't know about Chinese or Korean, but up to down, left to right is basically non-existent in Japanese. I honestly don't think I've ever seen actual Japanese text arranged that way ever because it's honestly rather visually confusing for most Japanese people to read that way
I second the above. In modern Japanese LR‐TB and TB‐RL are regarded as “the usual ways”, and RL‐TB “the archaic style” but TB‐LR is simply “wrong”. Little kids might occasionally write that way but it would quickly be corrected.
I would argue that it is extremely rare to see Chinese arranged TB-LR and in most cases it's just out of mistakes. This holds true for Japanese and Korean as well. Maybe ads do have such intended way of arranging but personally don't consider those as "writing".
@@terukiito8153not even Chinese books do top to bottom from left to right as far as i remember
Books start from right are top to bottom and left is just horizontal left to right
Only some old signs are horizontal but right to left
@@terukiito8153 because I was not talking about books. all three have a standard for printed material and web writing direction, books are;t going to violate that.
I've seen billboards signs written that way in Japan and China because they need to incorporate horizontal English with vertical text, it's weird reading English one way then read the vertical texts the other way.
Hello, conlanger here. I have decided, in my conlang, the direction will be LRBT coz a traditional document (made of paper) will be held with both hands, where one hand is at the top and one is at the bottom. It will also be held very close to your eyes so that you can only see one line at a time. As time passes, your hands which are holding the document will get tired and will start to slowly go down, thus making it easier to read a LRBT language.
9:22 Actually the newspaper shown here (dated 1879-01-25 Gregorian) is an example of TB‐RL and RL‐TB used together. The horizontal lines here are read right‐to‐left. The left‐to‐right direction for horizontal writing became the default around 1950 (although it did exist as an option before then, if a publication dealt with western‐style mathematical or musical notations in Japanese).
It is TB-RL all the way. The thing is, the title only has one character in each TB-line. So it is technically a TB title, but with limited space :D
@@ThalonRamacorn Yeah it can be described that way, and I see many people use that logic - usually when a RL line was set, it was just a single line without stacking multiple. Nonetheless the flow of the whole document is TB, so I removed the mention of it for simplicity. It is worth stressing though that long texts with many lines has very rarely (if ever) been set in RL‐TB.
@@user-oc5mw3fe3x I like to use this theory, because there are evidence that backs it up when you look at shrines in Japan. Many of the old shrines have their names written on them in a row, but also the other way around, like this: 社神(and the name in RL order).
What’s interesting about Arabic is that the words are read right-left but numbers are read left-right.
Then you have mad lass Su Hui from the 2nd or 3rd century China who wrote a poem that can be read from any direction (including diagonally and in a circle) and still make sense.
Palindrome poem
You have no idea how Chinese characters can be so randomly arranged. Mostly they are left-to-right and top-to-bottom alright, but right-to-left is also accepted as that is the only traditional horizontal order. In very rare cases of XX temple or XX hall, to dignify the place, it can be written as "X temple X" or "X hall X". I got confused too all the time.
Another variant you could mention is the way newspapers are written into columns, reading left-to-right to about a quarter of the width of the page, then top-to-bottom for the next line, and then left-to-right again for the next column.
I think the Mayans wrote in a way similar to this as well.
3:00 You forgot how Acient Greek can be like the ox turns (while plowing): to the left then to the right repeat going top to bottom. This is due it being written on stone walls and it be easier to continue where you left off then going back to the edge you started at.
Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
Surprised you didn't mention boustrophedon or Egyptian hieroglyphs. I guess that if we'd all grown up reading boustrophedon then there'd be fewer reading mistakes made due to accidentally skipping a line. Love the Hanunoo script idea of writing in whatever direction is away from the body. Do you think that as a lefthanded person I might be able to get a free pass on writing English from right to left to avoid smudging my ink if I cite your video?
You should also mention the distinction between letters that "sit" on the line and ones that "hung" from it.
Circular Gallifreyan is a script with spiral direction
What about languages that are written in boustrophedon? Any in use today?
This also predicts how people visualize time as directionality. As in a time in the future being left, right, up, down (or even forward or back for some cultures)
The only place I've seen English words in a diagonal l-r or r-l are Word Search Puzzles
Ditto
It was my understanding that runic inscriptions were typically LR, with RL occurring occasionally and being indicated by mirroring the individual runes. I don't recall exactly where I learned this, but I'm pretty sure it was in relation to Futhark. I suppose the reverse could have been more common for Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, but that would seem odd.
I'm curious how writing directionality affects page order in codex-style books. For instance, in English, you would read the left page before the right page, but in Japanese, it's typically the right before the left, as far as I know.
Reminding you to make a video about the connection between Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
Also, another writing direction option is alternating left to right and right to left for lines, or boustrophedon, which was used in some period to write ancient Greek.
This a very interesting channel.I have always been interested in wod and name origins.I learned Chinese was read the way it is at about age 10 from a friend who lived next door.For the most part, Mongolian is written in Cyrillic now
Woah! The direction change based on script used that you mention @9:53 is something we also do in Arabic! I never even realized that we're doing it but we write in Arabic from right to left, but then when texting friends/family using the Latin script, we go from left to right even though we're still using the Arabic language.
Ogham script (was used to write the Old Irish) is bottom to top… and then it goes stranger. The letters were carved on stone edges, starting from the bottom and then following the edge, so long lines can go bottom-to-top, right-to-left, top-to-bottom.
Scripts like arabic can be interesting because in forms like nastaliq the word can go diagonally from top right to bottom left
Also arabic calligraphy can be read and written a variety of ways… most of the complex calligraphy is read left to right, bottom to top.
Scripts like greek and latin used to be written in boustrophedon, ie, they changed the writing direction every alternate sentence, even mirroring the letters sometimes… this was done to prevent the breaking of one’s reading flow and also to mimic the continuous nature of spoken language.
The mongolian script became vertical after people decided to flip the previous left to right script by 90 degrees, or so I remember having read.
Regarding spiral scripts, take a look at the Linear A script. =)
another example of directional flexibility is with words written for drivers on roads, where the lines appear to go bottom-up ("left turn only", "bus lane"). more broadly, it's probably worth distinguishing between lines going top-down on a vertical surface vs. towards-away on a horizontal surface
Interestingly, i just got back to the UK from a trip to the US, and this really stood out to me. Because in the US they write on roads, LRBT. But in the UK, it is like all other writing, LRTB. And it was really hard to knock that instinct from my brain whilst i was there. Eg id be wondering why buses were being told to stop 'STOP BUS' rather than noting there was a bus stop.
The right to left is common on clay tablets not due to holding the tablet but holding the chisel in your left hand and hammer in the right
Speaking of writing direction, Hieroglyph is the most interesting writing system I know. It depends on where their Gods are; If Gods are sitting left of the script, all people and animals of each character turn towards them showing respect, which means you read the script left to right.
There are a few scripts which are confined on a singular line and will follow that line however it goes, though I don't know if these still are in use. In these there's either some start of line marker or the individual glyphs are distinct enough to tell the direction of the line.
As for conlangs, while I don't know of any that do spirals, I have seen at least one attempt at constructing a Gallifreyan-inspired script that constructed sentences as partially-overlapping forms which represented various concepts with different layering to add a new sentence-type structure. It sort of messed with the idea of expanding scope of word to sentence to paragraph, but it wasn't fully fleshed out.
I believe it was the Linear A script of The Minoans that was written in spirals on disks
I see you mentioned runes, but having watched a lot of Dr Jackson Crawford's videos I think I can say that runes were really free-form -- they would change direction, and they would even write in spirals.
As someone who writes in English I am now trying to use both left to right and right to left because I got inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and early Latin and Greek scripts
We did indeed learn this when we were learning to write in school. If you think about the age though, it is likely that it is something we forget learning. I must have just been interested in it.
5:05 That script is old church slavonic, if I'm not mistaken. It seems to be a romanian prayer.
Does anyone know where to find this?
Other comments have commented the historical use of bourstrophedon. I would like to add too that historically we do have spiral texts too in linear a and b.
I think I remember that Latin used to go from left to right, then right to left for the next line down and the letters were written mirrored.
Boustrophedon is the technical term- oxturn writing. Alternates directions, as does an ox plowing a field.
What is Cascagian? This language is mentioned in Gulliver's Travels as being written from bottom to top.
In Arabic it’s from right-left but in case of number you write from left-right then continue write the words right-left after you write numbers
I think it would have been interesting to mention "Boustrophedon". It's a very old way of writing and probably don't used anymore.
But the way to write it to write front left to right. Then in the next line goes right to left. Then Left to Right, and so on.
In Finnish, we read words from left to right after reading the letters from right to left which makes us read the text twice. However, I don't know if this is the same in all languages that use the Latin alphabet and writing system.
@4:17. There is a case. Tamil a South Indian language has 3 scripts. Although only one is used majorly. One is grantha, one is arwi and the most common one is Vattezhuthu. The Vattezhuthu and Grantha scripts go from left to right whereas the arwi script (used by a few Tamil Muslims) goes from right to left.
as a left-handed person i agree that it is hard to write Left to right without smudging the ink
Erasable ink pens in the 80's were the worst offenders I found for smudging. The side of my hand would be covered in ink.
3:45 as far as I know, the reason that no writing systems write the next line above the starting line is that its just way more convenient to go down a page than up it.
And there's Egyptian Hieroglyphics that can go either direction depends on which direction the glyphs are facing at.
I've heard of some ancient languages that alternate between left-to-right and right-to-left every other line. I think one of the earliest versions of Greek script did this.
it's very hard to change the direction of arabic since it's basically always in curisve. and the way letters connect and look like are based on the direction. It's very confusing and hard to read if we write the letters separaetly as i've seen attempts to write it using a computer lol. Sometimes they end up writing them left to right and the words are torn apart
Even though Chinese is written top to bottom then right to left,
each individual characters are mostly written from left to right, top to bottom.
10:45 yeah. Chinese scrolls are not held in hand vertically. Traditionally scrolls (or really just books in general) were strips of bamboo strung together where each column of text was one bamboo strip. It would also just be rolled into one cylinder shape rather than a pair like you'd see with medieval European scrolls. And thus the same convention was used when paper was invented.
I hope someone creates conlangs for LRBT, and RLBT! (Even though it can be just one conlang for both like the Hanunoo Script from the Philippines! They write in BTLR and BTRL!) 8:03
🤔 . . . I can imagine how each line could be read upwards, regardless if the line(s) are read left to right or right to left: they’re written on bricks & each brick is laid out as a means of storing that knowledge. However, as they stack, the result(s) become obvious: the older entries are on the bottom while the newer ones are on top…
Great concept something I've been aware of as long as I can remember, though I don't often think about.
When I was very young, my mom had a Chinese friend, so my siblings and I were exposed to this concept early. My dad spent 2 years in Vietnam before he & my mom married, so that was probably discussed fairly often "amongst the grown-ups." My ex husband is Arabic, & I would love to read, write, & speak that too, though I can do none of that. Still, I love the concept!
Reminding you to make the video about Chinese, Japanese and Korean ;)
Runes were actually written in either direction, but could also use boustrophedon or be written in a circle like on many runestones
Klawans writes about a patient who lost the ability to read left to right after a stroke. The stroke left him otherwise undamaged. It hit the nerve track that allowed the language center to see outside the central visual field. The patient taught himself Yiddish, which goes right to left, so he had something to read.
For most right-handed people language is centered in the left hemisphere, which has direct access to the right half of the visual field. Reading left to right requires less inter-hemisphere communication. The left hemisphere can directly see “what’s coming”.
In that sense left to right is “more natural”.
As a lefty, I've always hated the direction we write.
My little brother used to write mirrored, because he felt like directionality was optional and he simply chose the other direction. I don't think it lasted when he started attending school.
My friend who’s from India went to English school until she moved to the US and she speaks Hindi at home and with family fluently but ask her to read anything or write and she’s clueless
Completely unrelated to this topic sry
@@Hello_World418No, not completely unrelated. It's a response to the statement made at 0:56.
@@Hello_World418 there was no reason for you to write this comment
@bobbuethe1477 Well then i guess r/woosh
Maybe you can do a name like Kira, Kiera = Names sound that share around the world with similar meaning or opposite meaning .
Gallifrean is written counter clockwise. Beautiful
Really stupid
"What happens when a line comes to an end" sounds like a crisis that my friend constantly has
Uf you think about it Korean is really weird cause you basically change directions within a syllable . A syllable like 이 (i) is written right to left while 는 ( neun ) is written top to bottom . And a syllable like this 웒 (wonh) goes from top to bottom , then from right to left then on a next row again right to left .
I note that some have already commented on the missing out of alternation as a possibility, although I didn't know the precise jargon for that.
I would differ on writing left to right being inherently advantageous for right-handed people, though, so I will comment on that. Several times, as a right-handed person, if I'm using a pen whose ink does not dry instantaneously, I can find my hand dragging in the still-moist ink in the last few lines just written, whereas a left-handed person can avoid that as the hand is naturally held off the surface of the paper.
On a different directionality, where one world does not entirely comprehend another, I will never forget when my then-very-young nephew, on trying to play a vinyl record, instinctively placed the needle in the middle of the record, probably because CDs are read - as far as I'm aware, so somebody correct me if I'm mistaken - from the inside outwards. Are there any other Millennials amongst the commenters who have made that error? Maybe yourself, Patrick?
Hah, tell that to the side of my left hand.
Yeah, as a left handed person, my hand constantly drags and gets stained. Idk about you rightys, but I have to imagine it's less messy
@@GenoAlbright Maybe I'm just unfortunate, then.
If I understand what I've seen correctly, The Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) languages were often written such that the text looped back on itself. That is a left to right line might be continued below moving right to left. Interestingly, the symbols that were sounds did not necessarily occur in the order in which they were pronounced. The symbols were apparently arranged to be visually pleasing...That must have made deciphering the scripts maddeningly difficult. Plus, there were three scrips used. That must have been fun.
There is a lot of evidence that Ancient Egyptian hyrogliphics could be written and read in any direction; including bottom to top. As this would have made reading pillars easier
I distinctly remember, in school, being taught that you read from left to right, top to bottom.
futharc runes are often a clockwise spiral going inward
The mongolian script is derived from syriac which is derived from aramaic, which had semitic type writing order. When it was introduced to mongols, it was rotated to the left and became the unique direction it has. RLTB became TBLR.
Patrick,
The early Greek alphabet was written, like its Semitic forebears, from right to left. This gradually gave way to the boustrophedon style, and after 500 bce Greek was always written from left to right.
Boustrophedon is an ancient method of writing in which the lines run alternately from right to left and from left to right.
You didn't mention boustrophedon style where the writing alternates left/right direction on each line. Latin and ancient Greece were at one point.
Wow, I never thought Hanunoo is supposed to be written from bottom to top and left to right or right to left for the next line.
What about boustrophedon?
boustrophedon - like 'plowing a field'
Latin used to switch direction at the end of the line.
My elementary school journals are all left to right, bottom to top. (I wrote in English, mirrored upside-down.)
4:16 doesn't Chinese go left to right and Japanese goes downward?
3:37
What about khitan
I may be wrong here but i thought it was RLBT
I'm surprised there's no script that is switching direction with each line, like starting on left going right, next line goes right to left, next one left to right, and so on
7:45
Please do that video, I would love to see it.
Directions on roads are often written bottom to top. For example:
Zone
School
🚘
X-ING
PED
🚘
9:00 how do I know if the writer is left or right handed
You didn't mention hieroglyphics or other picture-symbol languages. That would have been interesting to know about.
5:50 *right to left
What is the language being able to be communicated with hand signals, like in Tamil a language I speak, I can basically use my hands to say you and I, will go to the temple later in my bike, call me at 4, its not sign language, but kinda is.
Tamil ah bro
7:54 this is a reminder to make that video
I think you are wrong about runes, although I don't know about Old English. but Old Norse was often written with alternating lines of runes having opposite directions. Start at the top left and go left to right, then do a line of right to left below it, then left to right etc. I think that some of the earliest examples of Latin (in the Latin script) also had this snake like directionality. Ancient Egyptian Heiroglyphs could go in any direction. To see which direction an Ancient Egyptian text is going, yo need to find a glyph like a bird or a person - that glyph will be facing the direction of the writing. A common pattern in Egyptian monuments is towards the picture of the Pharoah so there will be a panel of left to right before the portrait and a panel of right to left after it.