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It's a silly statement. Type, composed of little chunks of metal placed adjacent to each other, has a problem with scripts that aren't practically decomposable
by kps 11y ago
It's a silly statement. Type, composed of little chunks of metal placed adjacent to each other, has a problem with scripts that aren't practically decomposable into little chunks placed adjacent to each other. But that's equally true of ‘western’ cursives and equally false of ‘eastern’ non-cursives, including Semitic scripts like Hebrew and Ethiopic, as well as South Arabian¹, which would have been perfectly suited to type but was displaced by the cursive Arabic script.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Arabian_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Arabian_alphabet
- Eyas 11y agouhm, you do realize South Arabian alphabet was last in active use more than a thousand years ago. It now bears no resemblance to modern Arabic type. At all. I'm reading your argument as suggesting that over a quarter billion Arabic native speakers should have learned a new script? Not sure if that was sarcastic. Either way, if you are making this argument, it is easier for these speakers to learn English instead..
- kps 11y agoThe point is that the practicality of movable type for a script has nothing to do with whether or not the script is ‘western’.