The Mystery of Writing Direction
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ส.ค. 2024
- Have you ever wondered why some cultures write from right to left, while others write from left to right? The mystery of this phenomenon has puzzled scholars for centuries, but one theory suggests that it may have to do with the materials that were available to a culture.
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Holy crap that was mind blowing
LANGUAGE SIMP!!!!!!!!
@Its me Mario Luodingo
How did you knot know this ???
Impressive
Fr😅
traditionally chinese is written right to left in vertical columns written up to down, left to right was introduced in the late 19th century. the same is the case of Japanese and Korean.
I can confirm the Chinese part as an actual Chinese
I was just about to say the exact same thing. Back in school we would have grided notebooks and wrote in it that way.
Yes, that is because back in the old days scrolls were made from vertically arranged bamboo strips and Chinese characters are written in equally sized boxes, which makes Layout in general very flexible. You can basically choose any direction for writing and reading, as long as everyone else is in the boat.
If you are right handed, which the majority of people are, it's impossible to roll out the scroll with the vertical strips from left to right, because the whole cylindrical shaped scroll would be in the way of the writing hand (the right hand). Therefore, they are rolled out from right to left with your left hand, revealing one column after the other to be written on with your right hand. That's why traditionally, all literary and poetic texts in Chinese, Korean and Japanese are written in columns arranged from right to left.
A tradition that continues until today, you can still see it in the ink calligraphy on wall scrolls and modern novels. Newspapers can have a very flexible Layout, aswell.
@@user-bs4qu7tb2g that's neat
yep, you still see right to left chinese in most old temples
"Some languages like English or Chinese..."
Shows one of the most gorgeous Russian caligraphics I've ever seen
@@MeMM00I get what you mean, but they were really writing a Russian word
@@MeMM00it's also called cursive
@@abdurahmonsunnatulloh3968 i was not thinking straight, thanks bro
@@MeMM00bro it’s literally Время in cursive
@@user-qb7vy6gz6d yeah my bad, i thought i had seen russian cursive but this one is a bit more looking like letters i write with
Chinese was the second language you mentioned as being from left to right, but it is traditionally written from top to bottom and right to left. You could’ve easily picked many other non Latin-script language (such has Hindi)
My language, is a very very old language.
We write from right to left and read from left to right! You can guess which language it is!
I'm left handed and I can confirm, ink smears are a problem, so I don't use pens, just a hammer, a chisel and a stone tablet whenever I write a check.
I'm right handed and still struggled with it...maybe cause my hand sweats a lot.
I'm left handed and i just turn the note book a 90° and then write, turns out pretty good but everyone always wonder how I manage to write that way 💀
I'm right handed and always write in ancient Sumerian on clay tablets to avoid this problem. Cuneiform doesn't smear unlike English and Arabic
im persian , i born in iran .
Ok
“I AM A LEF-“ made my day
"I am a leprechaun".
Power to the left
I am a lefsbian
@@jamesglissoniii8279 right
i am left handed
Speaking of the smudging issue left-handed people have, I’m a right-handed Arab and I write in Arabic, which is from right to left, but never had this issue. It should be the same because we switched both the hand and the writing direction but I’ve never seen anyone complain about this or even mention it. 🤷🏻♀️
Do you write using a quill, or even a fountain pen?
@@Tarvok no
just normal pens and pencils
@@LelouchStrayKid traditional ink that are used on a quill or fountain pen dries alot slower
@@terukihoutaru8408 I don't know much about pens but we use normal pens. The ones you see everywhere all around the world. No smudges.
This is probably because you write with a pen. Back in those days their inks were very wet
With hieroglyphs it was written both right to left and left to right and top to bottom. You read towards the faces. Written on stone and papyri, but hieratic was written right to left on papyri and paper with 'pen' and ink and then switched to left to right using coptic
My Irish friend told me about Ogham which is the old writing system used for the Old Irish language, it's traditionally written bottom to top because that was the easiest way to carve it into trees, which was generally where it was written
Ogham script is pretty cool. I live in Scotland where some ogham inscriptions were found, and to be honest it's a better system than the Latin script for Celtic languages. like the Latin script aint doing Irish right when you have to read words like 'Grianghrafadóireachta'. At least ogham had characters for unique Irish sounds - in modern Irish spelling is very dumb. for example: 'mh' = v, 'bh' = w, 'ao' = i, etc etc
@@Alexander-vo4gv yeah agreed haha I have no idea how they decided stuff like mh=v etc
@@Alexander-vo4gvFun fact, bh has a "w" sound in words like abhaille (a-wal-ya) but it has a "v" sound in bhí (vee).
Indirectly making fun of Arabics 😂😂😂
@@Alexander-vo4gv I bet I could simplify Irish spelling using Latin script. I was doing Irish on Duolingo and I was like dude wtf. Same with English, but at least English preserves some etymology metadata in its weird spelling. I don't know enough about Irish to comment on that point actually.
And then there is me being left handed, screwing it all up.
Lefties unite 🥲
I hate we I get pen on my hand as I am writing, it sucks being left handed
Being left handed is a love hate relationship
i had to stugle with right handed chair-tables
Write on paper Rolls...like the Jews and Egypts etc...I do🎉
Indian languages must surely be an exception to this. Almost all Indian languages are written right to left even though Indians typically didn't use ink and paper for writing.
It's left to right XD
@@itsmeshyam1436 Yeah my bad. It's left to right
@@sadagoapan mᥡ m᥆𝗍һᥱr 𝗍᥆ᥙᥒgᥱ іs Tᥲmіᥣ, s᥆ ᥡ᥆ᥙr ᥆rіgіᥒᥲᥣ ᥴ᥆mmᥱᥒ𝗍 ᥴ᥆ᥒ𝖿ᥙsᥱძ mᥱ 😅
ᥡ᥆ᥙ sһ᥆ᥙᥣძ ᥱძі𝗍 ᥡ᥆ᥙr ᥴ᥆mmᥱᥒ𝗍 s᥆ 𝗍һᥲ𝗍 ⍴ᥱ᥆⍴ᥣᥱ ᥕ᥆ᥒ'𝗍 ᑲᥱ ᥴ᥆ᥒ𝖿ᥙsᥱძ.
In India, the North Indian languages are more angular with vertical and horizontal lines in the characters. While the south Indian languages are rounder and curvier. That’s because up north we used to use primarily paper to write. And in the south we used to write in palm leaves. Which would tear easily from straight lines. So they developed more rounder characters.
You're partly correct...
Virtually every written language known to exist began for the purpose of keeping records - primarily through tally-marks, using crude pictograms as 'column headers' to indicate what good was being recorded. As record-keeping became more prominent, the pictograms became more stylized for both legibility and ease of use; thus becoming the basis for primitive alphabets.
Even with the advent of clay tablets (c 3500 BC), papyrus (c 2900 BC), parchment (c 500 BCE), and paper (c 25 AD), top-to-bottom retained its prominence in writing systems; even in horizontal systems, the lines of text are still written and read top-to-bottom.
~ Left-to-Right (c 3500 BCE)
The chief substance to write on, historically, is clay - various Cuneiform (literally "wedge shapes") systems arose in nearly all 'Ancient Cradles' like Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Indus Valley. Being river-based civilizations with plentiful access to silt- and clay-based soils, they all defaulted to clay as the primary substrate for record-keeping systems and (eventually) writing.
As most people are naturally right-handed, with a tendency to let their hand rest upon the writing surface for stability and precision, writers adopted a left-to-right methodology.
Bonus Fact: As the people *reading* the records were accustomed to reading top-to-bottom (while those *writing* them preferred left-to-right), recorders simply rotated the characters 90° as a compromise - this further divorced written characters from their pictographic origins.
~ Right-to-Left
In regions where clay was less plentiful, stone became the prominent writing material. Again, most people being right-handed played a critical role in writing orientation - while being able to better see their work was indeed a factor, the biggest influence was the potential for accidents.
A chief liability of stone is hidden fractures; when carving text into stone, it's common for small pieces to chip/flake off unintentionally. This is not a major issue if it happens to an area you haven't yet carved, but could be disastrous if it fractures an area where you've already spent a fair amount of time carving.
~ Top-to-Bottom
As some have pointed out, the written languages of East Asia (ie Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc) remain top-to-bottom - this, too, is due to their historical writing substrates. The most plentiful substrate available to these cultures was bamboo, which was readily harvested and flattened to produce narrow strips to write upon. While they did have access to clay and papyrus, these materials were far less plentiful and needed for other more essential purposes. For longer records/texts, multiple bamboo strips were sewn together to form early scrolls. (In more northern climes, the same pattern evolved using strips of wood and bone.)
By the time paper was invented, writing top-to-bottom was well entrenched and there was no impetus to change the orientation. It wasn't until interaction with Western civilizations (which exclusively wrote left-to-right) became prominent that these cultures even considered altering their writing systems.
Great info, trying to see if there is a way I can pin this comment.
Where are the bottom to top writing systems? :)
Bamboo did not only influence languages like Chinese, Korean, and Japanese ect.. to write from (Top to Bottom), but it also influenced them to go from (Right to Left) as well. The reason why is because the Bamboo was used to make scrolls and when rolled 🗞️ up. The Rolled up portion would interfere with the writing for a right hander. With that rolled up portion of the bamboo scroll would make it difficult due to the bulge of the scroll, to properly write for a right hand person. That's why the older forms of these languages would go from (Top to Bottom) then (Right to Left). Also interestingly enough, it also influenced the shape of the characters for their languages as well. Since the bamboo strips had limited horizontal space, and since they had to go with a (Top to Bottom) approach they needed to insert as much information as possible in that limited space thus influenced the shape and creation of the characters in those Languages. Unlike the more flowing characters in other languages or the characters in western languages which had more space in the materials they had for writing. Take English for example, you did not need to make overtly complex characters because you had plenty of space on the writing materials you had like parchment. So you could make your characters much more simpler and still convey all the information you wanted given the ample room you had on the writing material.
@@noticedruid4985 That's a slightly different aspect...
Languages (along with their corresponding alphabets and writing systems) developed along two main lines - phonetic and ideographic. While phonetic writing systems (named for the Phoenicians, who seem to have invented it) focused on characters which represent general sounds and syllables, ideographic systems focused on characters which represent complete words and concepts. This is why the modern English alphabet has only 26 characters while Mandarin has over 50,000! Yes, only around 10% of those characters see common usage, but that's still 200 times more complex.
Though, in fairness, it may well be that many of the characters in Mandarin are combinations of simpler ones - say, for example, a character representing "sickle" is combined with a character representing "rice" to create a character representing "rice harvest". Not so dissimilar from compound Latin words like "thermometer", where "therm" means "heat" and "meter" means "to measure". Or even everyday English words like "girlfriend", "bathroom", and "bunkhouse".
Fascinating information.
Little known to most is that Phoenician script was actually developed from Hebrew letters.
This shows the true Israelite origin of the English and other European languages.
Chinese scripts are traditionally written top to bottom and then right to left. If a passage is needed to be written horizontally, it is still going from right to left. The reason for that is in the old days when words were written on bamboo strips, it was more convienient for a writer to place new strips from the left while still holding the brush with the right hand.
سلملي على الصين
If Chinese needs to be written horizontally, it is written from left to right, NOT right to left
@@sai_iaki horizontal scripts were used to be written right to left. For example in some old movies the subtitles went from right to left, gate couplets (horizontal ones). But for some reasons it changed to be written from left to right I don't know why. Maybe because of convenience or Romanisation? At least here in Taiwan you can still see horizontal scripts written from right to left. As for Chinese across the strait, I don't know if they still do this or not.
@@user-et4qb5oi4e I know that, I am Chinese too. But, I think that it's better to use an example that is closer to the present, since the other languages in this video are also presented in the present form. I hope this clear up any misunderstandings
That's crazy man, have you ever tried DMT?
If that's the case in India we've so many temples carved out of stone and we had chiseled the letters on stone from left to right some more than 2000 years back, even after ages we follow the same. You can see the inscriptions on the temples in India 🇮🇳
How Hebrew and Arabic could be from right to left
The word paper literally derived from the word papyrus, a plant growing in abundance in Egypt, an Arabic country. Fun fact: Papyrus was used to make paper, hence the word paper.
As a language nerd I absolutely love that this popped up on my shorts, exactly what I want to see
And yet he was wrong all the way. Read the other comment. (also: as a linguist, I absolutely certify you that what he says is liquid BS)
نيكوجار ain‘t cappin
I am a language nerd, too. ❤❤
Me too but half the shit he's saying is just incorrect
most of what he said is incorrect, because the real reason is uninteressing and boring to most people and not worth making a video about, so it won't make good content
Japanese is written from up to down than right to left.
In order to avoid putting ink everywhere on the paper, but it's also because it was written using different materials than you find in Europe. You could easily make a paint brush and can get ink decently easily from squids/octopus. The only reason it is now written from left to write is because Japanese as a language had to adapt to modernisation. By writing from left to right, you can fit more text, adjust its size more easily and costumise it more. Which is why on the internet you're going to read Japanese like this
こんばんわ、あたしはフラワーです。
どうぞよろしく！
Rather than
どこ
うん
ぞば
よん
ろわ
し、
くあ
！た
し
わ
フ
ラ
ワ
ー
で
す
。
It would also be Awkward to animate, however, some apps like Ibis Paint X are capable of writing in traditional Japanese direction.
If you translate to English your Japanese makes no sense lol. Kanji has a strange translation to engrish
@@oliverclothesoff5397idk much but maybe its because they are separated by rows
こんばんは
Not わ
@@oliverclothesoff5397 what Kanji, there’s only Hiragana and Katakana, but still I get your point 😂
@@oliverclothesoff5397 or maybe you're just an N5 pleb, thinking that Kanji has weird translation
I think it is not just paper, but other materials as well.
Like some ancient scriptures in Asia were written on Leaves using sharm objects, then after that they transitioned to using colors from flowers as ink and stuff
and then slowly transitioned to paper.
in both paper and leaves cases there was need of forests and trees, which kiddle east definitely lacked.
Thus many Asian and European languages write left to right or top to left while middle eastern languages go right to left.
the reason why arabic is right to left is because the word are made to be like that,and also it relate to the culture (islam/muslim)
Well arabic is copycat script of ancient Persian script was named Pahlavi script! There is nothing about your culture or anything like that😂
This brought up a random memory. In my junior high art class they would sit us 4 to a table. I was right handed, and placed at the left end of a table. To my immediate right was a boy who was left handed. Our elbows kept bumping while we would draw. One day we decided to just swap positions without consulting the teacher. She did a double take, but just laughed when we explained what we were doing.
I have the same problem with a boy in my math class.
That gives me an idea for a gag! Wonderful story, by the way. I would love to make a short comedy comic strip of that.
Sounds exactly like my friend and me
From taare zameen par
same story in my 3/4 grade just in math class. I was also the right handed person.
As a Mongolian, traditionally we write from up to down. Becuase of the gravitation, its the fastest way to write and on the horse back its the easiest.
I swear every other thing I learn about mongolia is somehow related to their horsemanship.
Is this a joke or are you really that dedicated to horses?
@@alexkunce2002 While ruling the largest contiguous empire in history, they would not stop and write hahaha
@@alexkunce2002they're drunk on fermented horse milk, obviously they're this dedicated to horses.
IIRC the script was invented by a Persian as Mongols previously didn't have a writing system. It first went like Arabic/Persian but later the Mongols decided to turn the entire page 90° clockwise and read the script that way, hence it's the only script that goes top-down then left-right.
Very interesting. Thank you. PS - LOVE your Shorts! I learn so much. ❤
5)
Chapter: To eat with right hand, and to start with the right side in doing other things.
(5)
باب التَّيَمُّنِ فِي الأَكْلِ وَغَيْرِهِ
Sahih al-Bukhari 5380
Narrated `Aisha:
The Prophet (ﷺ) used to love to start doing things from the right side whenever possible, in performing ablution, putting on his shoes, and combing his hair. (Al-Ash'ath said: The Prophet (ﷺ) used to do so in all his affairs.)
I love being a left handed Arabic learner cuz I can finally experience not smudging everything
I am left handed arabic
And the writing type in every left handed person in arabic is so good and pefect
i am a left handed arab and i don't smudge ink, idk what you guys are talking about
@@mohamedimranechehabi5735 writing English can get smudgy depending on the ink and paper because your hand goes over it, but since Arabic writes right to left I don't have this problem anymore
@@praupbskyhomk ok, but for myself, when I write, my hand goes under the line I am writing on, not on top of it, both in rtl or ltr.
@@mohamedimranechehabi5735 صحيح، وأنا أيضا مع أنني أكتب باليد اليمنى
The Greeks wrote "as the ox plows" which was alternating left and right lines. They also wrote in circles, or interspersed text with drawings. As the various city-states developed their own styles, Athens simplified its writing into lines of left-right. When Athens became the most important cultural center, people wanted copies of the plays and essays written there, so that style became the norm.
The very early Latin speakers did that as well.
Yes! βουστροφηδόν (boustrophēdon), "turning like the ox-plough"
IIRC, it evolved as a transition from earlier right-to-left systems typical of Phoenicia, to the later left-to-right.
Better info in the comments than in the short.
Do you know of any writing styles that are non-linear?
For people wondering what's up with East Asia being right to left before modernization even though we had paper for longer than any other region and used ink which is the claim in the short :
Although paper was invented very early in East Asia it was still very rare and we mostly wrote on wood like bamboo that were strung together. The direction of the bamboo fibers are thought to be a big factor in why we wrote in columns. When the bamboo pieces were rolled up you would hold the scroll with your left hand and open with your right so the right side would be seen first. So a theory is that to make sense for the reader it's thought writing right to left was preferable.
اللغة العربية الجنوبية في إحدى فتراتها كانت تكتب بطريقة المحراث
السطر الأول من اليمين لليسار والسطر الذي يليه يبدأ من اليسار إلى اليمين وحتى الحروف تنعكس هكذا:
◀️⏪⏮️↙️↖️⬅️↪️👈🫷🤛🌛
🌜🤜🫸👉↩️➡️↗️↘️⏭️⏩▶️
◀️⏪⏮️↙️↖️⬅️↪️👈🫷🤛🌛
🌜🤜🫸👉↩️➡️↗️↘️⏭️⏩▶️
Chinese and Japanese are traditionally written vertically with new lines appearing right to left. Japanese newspapers and novels are typically still printed this way. In school we write written essays this way too.
We only type left to right because of early computer restrictions.
I think you meant vertically, not virtually 😊
@@loulou785741 Indeed, thank you. I have fixed the typo.
Which is just the trend continuing of technology influencing writing style.
Relatedly, English has partially lost curly quotation marks (“. . . ”) to straight quotation marks (". . . ") due to typewriters, who only wanted to make one key instead of two.
Males sense,because they had abandunt access to bamboo and wrote in those
Makes*
As an Arab I can confirm that we write on stone tablets
Can confirm, i was the stone.
Can confirm, I was the hand.
Me too. I m GREEK. Greeks wrote on stone tablets even 1000 bc, left to right.
So this theory/analysis has no sense,,, is not valid!
@@geochatou8573 Exactly stupid theory...
@@geochatou8573 I was kidding we dont write on stone tablets lol, but you are right this theory is not valid at all
My mom learned Arabic when she was in college and, as she's left handed, she constantly laments the fact that if only she was writing in Arabic she wouldn't be smudging the words
The blue calligraphy shown in the video being written from right to left is the Farsi language specifically used in Iran.
I met a guy in college who was a transfer student from the Middle East and also spoke Arabic. He would take notes in both English and Arabic, writing in Arabic in his right hand and in English in left hand at the same time 😮
😮😮amazing
My guy is ambidextrous.Damn
Damn bro instant translation
No it's not like That I'm from kurdistan and Kurdish languge is left to right just like arabic and i also can speak arabic and write and i write kurdish and arabic ba my right hand and I write English by my right as well !!!
and I don't know about these student maybe he came from middle Galaxy!!😂
I’m more amazed that he can speak and think in 2 languages in his head in order to write in both languages at the SAME time. I can’t even write two simple but different English words with each hand..
and also why Southeast Asian alphabets are curved and tends to swirls, bc the material we writing on were leaves, so the curved shapes prevents from breaking the leaves when we write on them.
Really? Thanks , I didn’t know about this. Greetings from SEA !
That's really cool. What instrument would you use to write with?
@@GryphonWyng sharpen wood or sharp metal tip
I think he has made a video about it.
Same with Dravidian family languages too. 😊
Earlier, there were writing systems where writing was done from left to right, and then continued from right to left, and then continued from left to right.
Each line began on the side from which it ended.
Fascinating. I really enjoy this channel.
Conclusion: if you were left handed in ancient times you were screwed
Well. You're right. 😅
Imagine trying to eat with the hand you clean your arse with. 😅
not if you are writing in hebrew and arabic?
Lol only if you knew how to write. These things were exclusive back in the days.
As a lefty, I kept thinking the same thing throughout the video 😂😂
We still are nowadays :') many stuffs are just for right handed 🥲😂
Meanwhile Japanese: up to down 💀💀💀💀💀
I was just about to comment that 😂😂
They got bamboo abundance
I wanted to mention mongolian script but I guess that wirks too
Chinese too
Japanese started with writing on bamboo sticks and rolled paper.
This theory also means that older the written culture developed in a society, the tendency writing from right to left is higher. Ink pencil and paper is used much more later than hammer and stone to write. So the written culture developed from middle east.
I think writing from right to left is more logical and more consistent with the fact that most people are right-handed
*Egyptian Papyrus* has left the chat
Egypt lost its culture. Only arabis culture there
Egyptians didn’t use arabic when it was new
@@induchopra3014Egyptian papyrus is a type of paper that was used all over the middle east for centuries after Egypt Civilization demise.
@@alchemist7525they meant *modern* Egypt lost it's culture
@@alchemist7525 The methods of production of paper and papyrus are completely different
Then you get Japanese goes vertically from top right to bottom left
I thought it was top to bottom?
@@omegasteve8485 yeah vertical lines from top right to bottom left
It is left to right nowadays
really depends on context. a lot of books are still right-to-left
@@aierie-dragonslayer true. i see many paintings go by the traditional vertical way of text
The left to right is a common sense, but thank you for that right to left knowledge
Chinese was written from right to left vertically like Japanese or Korean.
The oldest European letters comes from Greek and its 740 bce and was written from RIGHT to LEFT(amazing!) .
Indian sanskrit was written from left to right.
While today European are writing from left to right is mainly because of LATIN ,Latin is written from left to right and most of modern letters comes from Latin.
I'm a lefty, and have smeared the ink my whole life. I've also been scolded for turning in papers with the "holes on the wrong side" because I turned the spiral notebook upside down so I didn't have to endure the spiral pressing into my hand. Lefties deserve more appreciation and respect.
Well we write right to left so being left handed is a gift when it comes to writing
@@mcpopcorn3195 as hebrew speaker i agree
@@Orielkn10as a different Hebrew speaker, (emphasis on speaker, not writer) I also agree. Generally though regardless of language (or hand, I’m a righty) I’m garbage at writing
Same with me also
Same here 😢
You're a brave man, holding that hammer near all of those books. Just when I thought I've seen everything
Is there some joke here I’m missing
@@zynthio Books are allergic to hammers
Greenscreen!
@@zynthio Some things are best left unsaid. Let's just be glad that everything turned out ok.
@@YoUtUbEhAnDlEsArEgReAt no please explain
Traditionally Japanese is written from right to left and up-and-down.
Left to right is relatively a new phenomenon
However, Japanese books and magazines are still written from right to left, but they generally go across and magazines, whereas in books, it will still go up and down, but sometimes across
It's because 'right' is considered sacred in those cultures. E.g. eating with right hand only and wiping yourself after going to the bathroom with left hand only.
Man threatens you with hammer while giving you a history lesson on writing styles.
Teaching done right.
And then, we have languages like Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Odia, Sinhalese written in palm leaves, which give them a curvilinear appearance, as straighter strokes could tear the leaves
Yes
Cool
What about the languages which use the Devnagari script like hindi, sanskrit and marathi?
dravidian gang (sinhala honorary) 😎
goes to show how islander SL are 😂
Tamizh a.k.a Tamil is written from left to right. In our older temples and excavations dated 2000 years old it’s still written from left to right in stones and pottery, palm leafs
FYI ancient chinese writes up to down, and from left to right or right to left. Characters can be mirrored too.
>languages like English and Chinese
>proceeds to write in Russian
лол
Так русский же тоже слева направо
@@anikaplayv2.035 да
*Время*
I thought it was Serbian until I saw the last letter
from a person living in the 21st century, the idea of "writing" something down with a chisel and hammer is something that feels like an eternity of a thing to do
they didn't regularly write on stone, they used other mediums. Stone carving was employed on special occasions, on some stuff with religious or ceremonial importance. This is true both for greeks and hebrews
@@IkhtionikosVDSyeah, it could be used clay and wax tablets or treated animal skin to be paper like, or when having acces, papyrus, depending how long they used the stone or other as hard mediun would make the writting way to keep
@@krosskreut3463 stone is super prohibitive, so much so that it doesn't really spark your fantasy to start writing or in fact drawing, which is usually the precursor step to symbol abstractisation. Plus, clay pottery is probably older than stone inscriptions. Plus, the blocky hebrew writing developed in the modern era, for printing reasons. The whole premise of the video is bullshit
@@IkhtionikosVDS depends clearly of type of stone and purpose, the egypciqn glyphs are stupidly complex yet it was used for a very long time, and clay inscriptions get written in similar manner to stone too, being hard just wont make it impossible
Paper was expensive too, but when people want to make as long lasting as possible they use stone, even mycenicans used stone for administration before paper or wax were as common as in the iron and classical ages, hell, people even wrote in metal tabkets like copper and iron, and that is way harder than engraving stone
It is, which is why it was only used for important shit, laws, treaties etc.
Bookkeeping and business receipts were written in clay.
I guess as a left-hander I would have been better off writing right to left to avoid smudging and staining my fingers, but they didn't give me that option
Chinese in Mainland China is written primarily from left to right, with some texts still written top to bottom.
Left handed problems 🤩 none of my sketch pads are clean because of pencil smudges
I hate left handed people
ikr😭 i literally have to do lineart without my hand on the pages or it smudges like hell💀
Omg sameee
Omg sameee
Right handed and have the same issue. Just because of how I hold my pencil
Fun fact, ancient Grek is sometimes read from left to right and then right to left, in a style called boustrophedon meaning "Ox-plowing" the text lines are like small plow furrows, when the oxen came to the end of the field it would turn and plow a new furrow.
He made a video about this. Was it before or after your comment? 🤔
Brilliant, First time I've learned this, thank you for sharing. However, the first time I was introduced to this concept had Channeled information showing me Ancient Egyptian hyroglyphs were read from Right to Left, starting at the Lower Bottom Right side, going up then down & up like a "snake" ( "plowing ") . And now this, I've been Vendicated. CL
@@giada3330 OH! I'd love to see that!
Fun fact, Script of Indus valley civilisation was also boustrophedon.
But, for your shock, it declined some 1000 years ago before the Greeks start.
@@giada3330 well the method existed already so i don't see your point?
as a left-handed student who always smudges the ink of his pen whenever he write, the development of left to write writing systems for cultures who had access to papers makes so much sense
Writing English is made for right handed people at this point
Brilliant explanation
As a kid, there were some of my classmates who were left-handed. They wrote upside down, so to not smudge the paper.
Wtaf
my ex girlfriend did that too
i think you mean they turned the paper sideway and wrot top down?
Seen it too!
Why couldn't I think of that? 😮
I could avoid smudging my pen's ink all these strugglesome years with pens.
Why did I even become a southpaw bruh...
As someone who speaks both Arabic and English fluently; back in elementary just right after spring break I would forget which one is typed from right to left and which from left to right 😂😂
Hahahah, it's hillarious
Ye I remember in English class they had to specify were the front of the book is and I find that funny
my classmates and i had that problem up until middle school haha
Where are from?
A see what kind of "spring break" you had…
that’s why i hate being left handed
It is difficult to write from left to right with the right hand, but it is very fast and easy to write from right to left with the right hand.
Left-handed people bouta switch languages
Yea
Not really, I'm left handed native to Hebrew soo I'm lucky ig
Condemned to always smudge our hands while writing on paper 😅
I’m arabic trust me it’s a living hell writing in both languages 😂
@@shaharh496 Same
Ancient Greek was written in what was called "turn of the ox": first line from left to right, second line from right to left and letters mirrored, third line left to right again and so on
I didn't know that, but if written that way, I could have finished my GOT a whole lot faster!
What 👁️👄👁️
I believe the reason for this is because they viewed written language as being lesser than spoken, and so they made it mimic a more natural movement, like speech
I believe the reason for this is because they viewed written language as being lesser than spoken, and so they made it mimic a more natural movement, like speech
even before the greek writing, other semitic writings such as phoenician and hebrew used the boustrophedon, aka ox-walk style when writing on parchment, not on stone. even befor them, the mesopotamian cuneiforms, that used clay tablets also wrote in either direction, depending on era and other factors
What happened is Thousands of years ago they all go together and someone went, "Hey Guys, I have an idea to mess with our kids..."
Same goes for writing in curved letters and those with straight lines. It's about surface available for writing.
And we left-handed people learn to deal with challenges in a world unfriendly to our particular preferences.
We definitely handle things differently! 😊
I know a leftie that hacked this! She turns the paper 90 degrees clockwise and writes top to bottom, right to left.
Took her a while to relearn how to draw the letters, but now she's as fast as anyone.
I'm proud of my "leftyness" :D
Indus Valley Civilization from India 🇮🇳 had peculiar bidirectional writing style. 1st line from left to right and 2nd line right to left. It's called Boustrophedon.
And pay more for violins lol
@@svennoren9047I want to learn to do that. When I tried it looked horrible. My hand is so used to the usual way that I end up overlapping the letters lol.
Me flexing, knowing i know only 2 languages fluently, and each is written in a different direction, so i know both directions of writings.
sameeee
samee but i know more languages
Same and i ll add two more
Saaaaameee,swahili,english ,arabic
Same lol, English and Hebrew
Thats interesting cause in Scandinavia, where runestones and writing on Stone was the norm until Christianity arrived, they used to write from right to left in elder futhark, whilst younger futhark, which still was written on Stone, was written from left to right
Arabic is a relatively young language. Also language like Japanese is written from top to bottom - right to left. Hence before putting up an idea in Internet, better to consider everything.
I remember learning in Ancient Greek class that Greek was stabilised as a left-to-right writing system later. When the alphabet was invented, they used to do both or even write one line in each direction.
I think Latin too.
Do you mean the new Hellenic alphabet (started in the time period between 1200 B.C and 800 B.C) that remodeled the phoenician or do you mean the Grammic B/Mycenean alphabet/Heiroglhyphs used from the 1800 B.C to 1300 B.C .
You must be more specific
@@Nw-zh1uq new Hellenic
@@Nw-zh1uq The Greek alphabet. Not Linear B.
Yeah, a boustrophedon
As far as I know here in south east asia (or at least Indonesia), we use both leaves (lontar/palm) and stone (also occassionally precious metals for formal documents), but if I remember correctly we start from the left, even when it's written on stones. Example: Gajah Mada Prasasti (Inscription) from 1351
Iam from india and we too used palm leaves and stones but we start from left to right like english.
Maybe the leaves is more prominent tools, the inscription is just for big ceremonies, hence why left to right
In Panyupayana (precolonial Philippines) the ancestors also used to write from left to write. Writing materials include bamboo, copperplate (like Laguna Copperplate Inscription), gold sheet (Mahapratisara amulet), stone (Montreal stone), ivory (Butuan seal), and most likely palm leaves like the Indonesian lontar.
What do you mean by "if i remember correctly" you forgot writing???
@@uudaykumar that mean if he's wrong you could correct him.
I love examples of the material world influencing something seemingly non material such as communication.
It is better to say that languages written from right to left are older than those written from left to right because access to paper is much newer than access to stone.
"Some languages are written from left to right like English or Chinese "
*Proceeds to write in Russian*
Underrated comment
Or Serbian
@@anelnsвремя in serbian is време so i’m kinda sure it’s not serbian
Time
Этот почерк красивый
That hammer fall 😭
Could have been omitted...
LMAO
hammerfell
Interesting. I am learning Arabic now. I think this solved my question.
Sorry bud but he's just yapping cuz Egyptians invented paper
@@user-zl3iw5oq7g No, it was Chinese. Google it.
Chinese was traditionally written from right to left until less than half a century ago. All old texts from traditional prints are read from right to left.
This explains alot of things. In Chinese, we also had and still have writings done both right to left and downwards and this is done in traditional mediums involving stone or wood carvings so doing the carvings in that direction makes a great deal of sense.
That's actually not true. The characters themselves are written left to right, while the sentence is structured top down and succeeding sentences are placed to the left.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the original ancient Chinese characters like maybe bone script had stroke order right to left, but once the brush came the stroke order of the characters itself is very much top down left to right.
I wonder if writing direction plays a role in time perception. Like English speakers general thinking of time as progressing left to right. So I wonder if people that write right to left think if time as going right to left. I also wonder how handedness affects things.
Arabic and Hebrew speakers draw timelines from right to left!
That would still not mean there's a difference in the perception of time. There's been many studies in the vein of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to test exactly these sorts of things, and the effects, if they exists are very very small and limited to very specific circumstances.
And in any case, the writing system is not likely to affect it, because children are fluent in a language long before they write in it.
Yes, actually! As a native Hebrew speaker, timelines (like for powerpoint presentations or gantt charts) usually go RTL. But if it's the time axis on a graph (or a number line for that matter), we 100% conform to LTR. Interestingly enough, if you create a default graph in hebrew Microsoft Excel, the graph would by default be created with the X axis RTL.
Which is super annoying.
@@omerlord0 so true, the first thing that we learn in a lab course is how to change the graph from RTL to LTR😂 ( otherwise 15 to 25 points down if your lucky).
@@omerlord0 חיים זה סבל
The right to left with the pen would have smeared as well. Great short but with the pen write backwards so people can understand. I do both that’s why I could notice the difference
As a left handed person from Japan, I love the way we write vertically, from up to down, then onto another column to the left!
As someone learning Japanese who happens to be left handed, I can attest that the vertical writing system is a LIFE SAVER
finally a good "long" video without 29 parts
ur Hand writing is brilliant
ive never seen a guy that doesnt know what hes saying but yet say it with so much confidence 😂
indeed.
Don't listen to Americans whenever they start talking about something outside of US.
I know it's not the writing specifically, but this just reminds me of the first time I picked up a manga and it had that warning in the back that you had to read the pages right to left, but the words will still written left to right.
In the actual Japanese manga, the text is also written right to left in vertical columns.
@@danieljoybaguio7975 yeah but only vertically, it used to be the same with horizontal text too but post world war 2 they switched the writing direction to be more like English and left some things untouched. Essentially, for horizontal text japanese readers have the exact same experience as Americans lol
The words in Latin script that some how were pushed into tall thin text frames
Originally Chinese was right to left in vertical columns. Top to bottom first for each column.
Syriac language preceded Arabic and the later derived from the former which is also written left to right.
Chinese(and every other language in sinosphere, including Japanese, Manchurian, Korean, Vietnamese, etc) is written right to left traditionally, it changed to left to right to be more “western”
Thats some weird mind cu-ck-ed mentality.
Traditionally they were actually written top to bottom
Manchurian is written left to right.
@@kenkaneki9138or just keeping up with the rest of the world and dumping useless traditions
@@helloworld0911 you're right, I made a mistake. Languages like Manchurian and Mongolian are more influenced by Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan language, thus is written left to right, top to bottom. Thx for correcting me
Traditional Chinese were written from top to bottom in columns from right to left. Also, horizontal plaques are still from written from right to left. The right-to-left and top-to-bottom rows are a recent introduction from the West. There are still plenty of books written top-down and from right to left. I believe that is the case for Japanese as well, not sure about Korean.
Sneaky Japanese and its difficult language
Which discredits this whole theory
Im arab and in school we started the notebooks for english from the right and for arabic from the left we would switch them sometimes so we had to write backwards
Even though it’s won’t effect right to left or top to bottom, we most find stone in mountain or stone on streams.
“So as to not smear the ink as they wrote”
*laughs in left handed*
For ages, in many cultures, left handed people were forced to write with their right hand in school. Many of them became ambidextrous with respect to writing, as they would often write with their right hand at school and with their left hand at home and elsewhere.
Also when they dualwielded daggers afterwards they didn’t have that pesky 50% less damage from their offhand attacks!
@@YashaHarariea that was awful and what was even worse is that they did that because they thought being left handed was a sin
@@nemui9654 😅 this was funny ngl
@@bhumigandhi2426 yup
I think the reason he's saying Chinese is "left to right" is because the characters each are written left to right as you draw them, even if they were top to bottom and then proceeded to be placed right to left
But there's plenty of stone engraving in China too, so I don't know.
Also, the idea that Arabic was ever written on stone by hand is hard for me to believe, it's so fluid.
it never was people used to write on animal skin
Chinese characters were also written right to left top to bottom before. japanese writing kanji retained this. chinese only shifted to left to right in character writing and sentence writing in recent centuries under western influence. people wrote right to left in ancient times because they used to carve the chinese characters in wooden scrolls before which used to be in vertical strips. when you open up a scroll, it's better to write them vertically with the next line on the left so u can move the scroll over, but chinese writing existed even back then when they carved them too on animal bones, stone, and metal pots
@@xXxSkyViperxXxit's more because the bamboo pieces that made up the scrolls are arranged to be written top to bottom and after completing a line, they pushed the pieces to their right, which made the overall direction right to left. The stringing process doesnt affect this cuz they just strung them in the order they were placed
@@cubing7276 thats what i said already
Chinese was first written in bones, the same as arabic
The first paper-like plant-based writing sheet was papyrus in Egypt, but the first true papermaking process was documented in China during the Eastern Han period (25-220 AD), traditionally attributed to the court official Cai Lun, and paper didnt reach Europe untill the conquer of Spain by the Islamic empire .
After the Arabs invaded Spain, they introduced the paper industry in the city of Gativa "Gativa" in 1150 AD. From Spain, due to the paper industry, to the Mediterranean route, there is another Europe that transferred the paper industry from the Levant to Italy. Where Fabriano, the first airport for paper industry in Italy, was established in 1276 AD.
• The paper industry was cut from Italy to the rest of the gates, and it appeared in France and Germany in the 14th century, where the German artist Uiman Stromer "Uiman Stromer" in Germany in 1390 AD was the first coated paper using a method in paper making after its invention.
• In the 15th century, paper was made in the Netherlands, Switzerland and England.
• In 1580 AD, the paper industry was able to be made in Mexico and then to the rest of the English colonies.
• In the (16th - 17th) century, it was decided to make paper in America.
Me watching as a artist "yeah avoid smudging ink on paper"
I've heard that Phoenician was written both ways in a sort of pingpong way, and that each language just picked a direction or evolved from one direction or the other
boustrophedon! (literally means like a plow)
Egyptian sometimes wrote things from both right and left towards the center for symmetry,, but would also switch directions. The way to read was always towards the open mouths of birds
I think early Greek did that too
@Charlie G
Greek alphabet developed from Phoenicians alphabet.
Greek was written both ways, but later on, they adopted the Athens way, which is left to right.
Arabic developed from Musnad or Southern Arabic (a different language than Northern Arabic known today as just Arabic), and it was written right to left, but with influence from Phoenician.
as a russian speaker, I was so happy to see «время» being written. melt my heart
No one care
what does it mean? cyrillic cursive is so beautiful, I always recognize the little curve upwards before certain letters.
@@matchaeylle время means “time”