Ok, I'll admit it... I am somewhat of a linguaphile. I enjoy learning about language roots, ancient written texts and other very geeky subjects. Not enough to really go over the deep edge, mind you. But enough that I figured I'd give you a new type of post today.
I'm sure all of my readers are aware that the Western style of written language is from left-to-right, top-to-bottom. That's how you read this entry, for instance. I'm also pretty sure that you're aware that other writing systems exist in the world.
For instance, some Middle Eastern text (such as Arabic or Hebrew) is written from right-to-left, top-to-bottom. So instead of left justifying the text in Arabic, you'll see it right justified.
Then there are the Eastern Asian languages which traditionally write text from top-to-bottom, left-to-right. In this case, the text is top-justified and flows down the page.
These are both very common writing styles which you'll also see supported in computers frequently. But they are by no means the only writing styles!
For instance, you can write boustrophedonically, which was common in pre-Hellenic Greece. Boustrophedon scripts are ones which don't flow from left-to-right or right-to-left, but both! You start on the one side, write towards the other, and when you reach the end of the line, you go down a line, and write mirror the text in the opposite direction. An example would be better, I think.
This form of writing wasn't just used in Greece either. You'd find it in Latin scripts as well. And if you think boustrophedon is dead, you've never looked at a US or Candian township survey map. Their numbering system is in boustrophedon; numbering starts at 1 in the upper-right of the map and proceeds boustrophedonically until the number 36 (the surveys are in a 6x6 grid) in the lower-right.
Ok, fine, so people write boustrophedonically as well... What else could there possibly be? Why, Rongorongo, of course! It's a form of reverse boustrophedonic writing in which alternating lines are not mirrored, but rotated by 180 degrees. As if that wasn't enough fun, but Rongorongo was typically written on round discs. This form of writing was used on the Easter Islands and its deciphering is highly contested. Heck, scholars can't even agree whether it's ideographic, pictographic, mnemonic or phonetic and aren't entirely certain whether it's considered a language. But, it's another example of written scripts, so it counts as a writing style.
Unlike boustrophedon, I don't believe reverse boustrophedon is currently used in any writing system, which I find mildly odd since I would guess reverse boustrophedon would be easier for people to understand (since the glyphs don't change shape, just orientation). Oh well!
Is this just as fascinating to you as it is to me? :-)
I think I'm having an epileptic episode right now...
Aaron, I expect to see support for this in r4...better get crackin' ;)
I'd be happy if we had bidi and IME/NLS/TS support so that we could better support right-to-left and Eastern Asian languages. I wouldn't hold my breath for boustrophedon or rongorongo any time soon though. ;-)
You forgot Yiddish, the international language for cool insults. ;-)
Neat.
What? No pig-latin? :P
This is/was all very cool stuff.
It's one reason long ago I applied to work for Wycliffe Bible Translators.
Since they often go into areas where there is no written language nad have to "figure one out" they had some extremely cool software (on the Mac) for dealing with the various written languages of the world.
The demo's were all VERY amazing and mixing numerous languages and writing systems in a single document was easily done (this was in ... 1997 / 1998 or so using WorldScript and some hugely custom written editor.
The fellow who wrote most of it even wrote several articles for MacTech about it.
The technology involved was seriously cool and the writing systems it supported were also fascinating in their complexity.
I never did work there as their needs and my needs were quite different. But it was cool stuff !
Off topic for this post, but I remember the recent posts talking about GUI design, etc. Has anyone read the book, "GUI Bloopers" (I can't remember the author right now, but it has a purple cover)? It's a bit dated, but I thought it was pretty interesting for anyone interested in lots of little GUI details.
Languages are quite interesting. Human languages more so than computers, since humans are not so predictable. I'm taking Latin in school and teaching myself Arabic online, and enjoying both immensely. Go curiosity!
@Aaron - http://www.omniglot.com is a cool place to vist. A lot of the links it goes to are fun as well and very intersting.
@Asher - try a liguistics course as well if you have the option. In the ones I took at University they not only delved into various language systems but they covered a lot of the "how to's" of speaking a new language. One example was how to say snow in one of the Inuit languages (northern Canada's natve people). The text showed you how to hold your tongue to enunciate. Very cool as everyone could get it right without much effort because they told you how to shape your mouth, hold your tongue, etc. I wish other languages had been taught like that. My Chinese would have been a lot better if that's how I'd been taught. Now I never even use what little I learned.
Egyptian hieroglyphs have a little boustrophedon too. If you look at "documents" [since they're mostly slabs of stone, it's a bit hard to call them documents, but anyway], you can see that the human-like and animal like figures are sometimes facing east, sometimes west, and that the texts are written either horizontally or vertically. With all combinations thereof on the same "document". The trick is that the texts are oriented the same way the person they refer to [in the case of "cartoons"] is.
@dda -- yeah, I've heard of that. It's not really boustrophedon, technically, but more of a way to tie subjects to descriptors, IIRC. You see the same thing in English vs other languages. For instance, you would say "red cat" in English (descriptor, then subject), and "gato rojo" in Spanish (subject, then descriptor).
If it was truly boustrophedon, then the glyphs would change direction based on which line they were on.
Aaron, IIRC in Japanese (at least in what few Mangas I read about) they even write top-to-bottom, right-to-left. So, many Mangas actually start in what we'd think is the back of the book. Of course, often they are flipped before being published in the west.
Oh, and I also love language. Runs in the family, I guess. My sister's a linguist, and we often talk linguistics at the dinner table with my dad. Comes from being a multi-national family, I guess.
@Chad: GUI Bloopers is by Jeff Johnson. It's a great book. Conveys the ground rules very well (I think the web site has the chapter on text for free, as a sample), and uses lots of practical examples. It /is/ a little dated, and a few points I personally don't agree with, but it's still a book I recommend to everyone who has to do a GUI.
You have given a good example of the boustrophedon arrangement of Rongorongo. A further 'wrinkle': The direction of reading of a Rongorongo tablet is bottom to top such that your first line "This is an example. . ." should be on the bottom. And then you turn 90 degrees, flip upside down and go to the line above to read the next row and so on. Judging by the wear pattern on some of the Rongorongo tablets it appears that the Rongorongo men held the tablet by the sides until they finished that first (bottom) row and then grasped the tablet by the bottom--flipping it like a hand-fan each time they moved to the next row.