The Global Decline of the Arabic Script (2010) | Hacker News Reader

The Global Decline of the Arabic Script (2010)

cominganarchy.com

27 pointssubnaught10 comments

If your language doesn't contain Semitic-specific sounds like ع or ح or ق , and more of the common phonemes in Latin derivative languages like « v » it does make sense to make the switch to Latin like Ataturk did with the modern Turkish language, but if not you may need to stick to the Arabic script because the Latin script is ill suited to convey clearly and easily the common Semitic phonemes case in point the Maltese minus the Italian words.

If it does just the numbers 3, 5, 7, 9 for ع and خ and ح and ق - that's what everyone I know is doing online

This system is not perfect and a bit confusing albeit convenient and accessible. I'm thinking going for a diacrtics-based system for formal transliteration in lation like for example:

- âadel == عادل (fair) (noun)

- ĥaled == خالد (eternal) (noun)

and so on and so forth but the problem is most computer keyboards used in by native Arabic speakers are US compatible and those letters are not accessible and even on mobile devices, it's a bit inconvenient to type those letters.

I don't think the sounds matter as much as the sound patterns. You can certainly make up diacritics and letters that fit the visual style of Arabic or Latin script to make up for missing sounds in a particular language. I assume (I could be wrong though) that Arabic and Hebrew writing and vowel patterns are such that a native speaker, and literate, can read well without that vowel diacritics since most words are based on tri-consonant roots (though I understand modern Hebrew has a lot of borrowed words from non-Semitic languages). In languages without consonant roots, if you remove the vowels, it seems to create a lot more ambiguity. I wonder if there are any studies on that?

You could definitely use diacritics to write Arabic-specific letters in Latin script but why would you do that?

I can understand the use case of Arabic transliteration in Latin script languages but other than that it becomes very impractical and inconvenient as the Latin alphabet was devised to represent the sounds common among the Europeans at inception and mutatis mutandis for Arabic.

So, it doesn't make any sense to use the Latin alphabet and overload the letters just to transmit the Arabic language through it.

The tri-consontant root is another problem and big hurdle for adopting the Arabic script in other languages as it's by design terse and there are a lot of implicit stuff due to omitting weak or short vowels from the words and this could prove problematic for some speakers of other languages. However, the Latin script is still not optimal and there are tradeoffs made in the languages based on it.

Interesting... I knew about Persian and Urdu, but had not realised there were a lot more non-arabic languages using the Arabic script:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_script#Languages_curren...

The big guns are still Arabic, Persian and Urdu and the rest are just regional languages/dialects with no huge impact on the whole scene.

I recently asked friend to translate Arabic inscription on the battle helmet of young Russian tzar - Ivan the IVth, later called the Terrible. It says "In the name of Allah..." and so on. 16th century. Arabic was in use in Russia.

Rtl script is inefficient

Ah, but Left-To-Right script is equally inefficient, just in a different direction.

Unless, of course, you have some neurology studies to share indicating an innate "handedness" to human symbol-recognition?

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