Re:Why Arabic is Terrific
by masklinn on Sunday August 21, 2011 @12:10PM
(#2909469)
> I thought the same thing for English and French, no? When I learn English and French in school, we join letters.
I don't think cursive letters significantly "change their shape depending on what their neighbors are". There is more variation in personal cursive styles than due to neighbors in a single cursive style.
The only modification to letters are small lines joining them with one another, generally from the "feet" around the baseline.
> The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)
Correct for pronouns (especially in masculine "taking over" feminine as soon as a single male is included in the group), but french does not use different plural forms and verb conjugations for feminines (let alone distinguish between dual and further plurals).
> Not true.
How is it not true? You're saying exactly what he wrote: what are commonly known as arabic numerals aren't used in (middle-eastern) arabic.
> The real Arabic numbers are the ones used today.
There are no "real arabic numbers", North-Africa use western arabic numbers (what we call "Arabic numbers"), the middle-east uses eastern-arabic numbers ("Indic numerals"), western-arabic numbers progressively got their modern shape in Europe between the 10th and the 15th century (they got fixed with the advent of typesetting and print).
I don't think cursive letters significantly "change their shape depending on what their neighbors are". There is more variation in personal cursive styles than due to neighbors in a single cursive style.
The only modification to letters are small lines joining them with one another, generally from the "feet" around the baseline.
> The same for french. (Il, Ils, Elle, Elles, On)
Correct for pronouns (especially in masculine "taking over" feminine as soon as a single male is included in the group), but french does not use different plural forms and verb conjugations for feminines (let alone distinguish between dual and further plurals).
> Not true.
How is it not true? You're saying exactly what he wrote: what are commonly known as arabic numerals aren't used in (middle-eastern) arabic.
> The real Arabic numbers are the ones used today.
There are no "real arabic numbers", North-Africa use western arabic numbers (what we call "Arabic numbers"), the middle-east uses eastern-arabic numbers ("Indic numerals"), western-arabic numbers progressively got their modern shape in Europe between the 10th and the 15th century (they got fixed with the advent of typesetting and print).