People have told me that Urdu and Arabic are read right to left. As a person who grew up reading from left to right (Indian langs except Urdu I suppose and English), it boggles my mind as to how this is easily possible. My knowledge in this is nil, so please enlighten me. Does the sentence start at the bottom right side of a page or paragraph? So if you are writing in a note book, how does this work? What do you use for ending a sentence? Is there a period as in English or some mark as in Devnagari- like (|) ? When you are writing local languages like Sindhi in Arabic/Persian script, how do you compensate for pronunciation? A muslim once told me that all muslims can read the scripts(Persian/Arabic etc) even if they don’t understand the language. Was he wrong? I can’t even fathom adopting Latin script for Hindi or even Devanagari for some S. Indian languages coz quite a few of the pronunciations are a pain to produce if not impossible.
Re: Language and Scripts
I don’t know it’s easy to read right to left as well.
i found out another interesting fact that kharoshti script (which existed in Gandhara) was also right to left. One shocking thing is that the numerals for 1, 2, 3 are same to how we use in Urdu/arabic now
Re: Language and Scripts
yes a majority of muslims near about all of us learn to read quran in arabic...so all of us know arabic script...
Re: Language and Scripts
just little more mind boggling thing for you…
Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Re: Language and Scripts
Lets address your questions one by one:
**1. Does the sentence start at the bottom right side of a page or paragraph? So if you are writing in a note book, how does this work?
**
It starts from right to left on same line. No ups and down like Chinese / Japanese. I remember anger of my teachers, as I used to write teRha meRha ( not in line) 
Here is example of Urdu sentence written from write to left. After a line ended, a new sentence (or incomplete sentence) starts in next line from right to left.
اردو اچّهی زبان ہے۔
2. What do you use for ending a sentence? Is there a period as in English or some mark as in Devnagari- like (|) ?
In Urdu, we use hyphen (-) for completing a sentence. Use of (,) ( ; ) (?) (!), etc is similar to English.
کراچی کس طرف ہے؟
3. When you are writing local languages like Sindhi in Arabic/Persian script, how do you compensate for pronunciation?
Its denoted by some signs know as Harkaat ( movements on letter- It includes Zer, Zabar, Pesh, etc)
example of Harkaat: **اُ ر دُ و
**There are four letters:First and Third letters havd harkat known as Pesh
4. A muslim once told me that all muslims can read the scripts(Persian/Arabic etc) even if they don’t understand the language. Was he wrong?
A person knowing Urdu Alphabet can recognise Arabic / Persian Alphabets, but Arabs can not recognise all Urdu letters, as there are more letters in Urdu than Arabic.
Re: Language and Scripts
can you speak urdu?
Re: Language and Scripts
meri urdu weak hai, I’m a burger 
Re: Language and Scripts
Hmm…which one? Zinger? 
Re: Language and Scripts
paindoo log. Its not Zinger, its Xinger 
paindoo log. Its not Zinger, its Xinger
[/quote]
Aaj to muqawwee bhai bhi burger ban gaye…:hinna:karachi ki hawa
Re: Language and Scripts
My thoughts:
I taught myself the three desi scripts I know (Davanagari, Gurmukhi, Nastaliq) and among the three, I’d say the easiest to read is Gurmukhi (Punjabi). Nastaliq (Urdu, Pak Punjabi, Farsi, etc) is quite a bit of a challenge for me, having learnt it on my own, due to a few things:
-Writing the script in a cursive style
-Not writing the vowel marks
-Writing from Right to Left
Points one and two are the most troublesome to me. After awhile of reading progress, you get used to reading from right to left.
As of late I’m having more trouble with Devanagari. These conjunct characters are maddening. I have to read a book/article with a blasted conjunct chart next to me 
Interesting bit: After having become somewhat comfortable reading Nastaliq (Urdu, etc), whenever I see things written in Arabic, I can read them quite easily. I CANNOT however understand them hahaha.
Re: Language and Scripts
Urdu is a mixture of languages (Persian, Hindi, Arabic, etc), so one read Arabic / Persian, but can’t understand as vocabulary is different to great extent.
Re: Language and Scripts
^And also grammar.
I think Japanese has been written up to down, left to right and right to left at various points in history. How cool is that.
Accommodations are generally made when adapting scripts to various languages. Such is the case with the Arabic script too.
And also, scripts probably change more often the language lol
Re: Language and Scripts
About the writing direction. While many scripts today follow left-to-right direction of roman script, but the first script developed in the world was written right-to-left.
Re: Language and Scripts
About the writing direction. While many scripts today follow left-to-right direction of roman script, but the first script developed in the world was written right-to-left.
which script was that?
Re: Language and Scripts
Egyptian hieroglyphs. And scripts of Semitic languages, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic etc.
'First script' was my bad choice of words. I meant it in the sense if 'earliest scripts'.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were adopted by Semitic speakers to fit their needs. Somewhat similar to how Persian or Urdu adopted Arabic script to fit theirs.
Re: Language and Scripts
I have taught myself 3 indian scripts, 2 S Indian and Devanagari. I found them quite easy to learn. Just looking at Urdu frightened me. I don’t think that is one script that can be self taught. May need a teacher. Plus, I had a lot of confusions abt that. Thanks Muqawwee and everyone else 
Re: Language and Scripts
There was an old magazine back in the day that taught urdu through devanagari scrpt.
Re: Language and Scripts
There was an old magazine back in the day that taught urdu through devanagari scrpt.
Can Devanagari even do justice to Urdu completely?
Re: Language and Scripts
It is not as difficult as it seems. But yes, a teacher might be required in the beginning.
Important thing is that every letter will look slightly different depending on its position in the word (at the start of the word, in the middle, at the end). This was done to make the script quicker to write. Sort of a short hand.