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Help! Is This Arabic?

isthisarabic.com

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Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#261

Post by lelandfe »

disintegrator wrote: post #258
lelandfe wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do "top-to-bottom locales" exist? Has anyone built a site with users that get utility out of these? I've usually found that the arguments for these properties revolve around, "well, what if I decide to use traditional Mongolian in the future?," which seems like the biggest case of YAGNI I can think of. I suspect their popularity is owed to tutorial authors showing off their CSS prowess. (I'm also not convinced of the…

I'd say it's YAGNI if it required going out of your way to add something on top of your project. CSS logical properties mirror traditional properties one-for-one. Once you know about them why would you go back to older layout properties? The need to support different locales is really a question of what product you're building or audiences your targeting. e-commerce, news sites, social networks... they seem like good…

I love supporting different locales, and have shipped sites for multiple continents. I don't know if your locale in question exists.

Forget my question on your users getting utility out of this. Have you ever seen a site, any site, that supports switching to top-to-bottom writing? Against what future are we proofing – a new language arising?

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#262

Post by Cyph0n »

poulpy123 wrote: post #226
Cyph0n wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Arabic speaker, baby steps! For spoken Arabic, a decent placeholder is either MSA (standard Arabic) or a generally understood dialect (Egyptian or Levantine). The latter is what a lot of the recent Arabic game dubs have been doing (e.g., Ubisoft). Another example: Pixar and Disney use Egyptian Arabic for their dubs. Edit: Oh, and for written Arabic, you should almost always be using MSA. That is, you shouldn’t…

Do you know why levantine arabic is more used for dubbing ?

My understanding is that it’s simply because they were among the first to setup dedicated dubbing studios.

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#263

Post by IanCal »

psychphysic wrote: post #231
IanCal wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exactly if you aren't comfortable with the idea that glyphs are distinct and order can be assumed to matter. But isn't that exactly what it's just telling you? The order is important and if you see this very simple pattern it's wrong. If you read any latin character based language then you surely must be OK with the idea that glyphs can be distinct? Are there many people who exclusively read languages where the ord…

Yea we are in agreement.

Sorry, I'd not read the usernames and was trying to tie your response to the original comment. Makes a lot more sense now.

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#264

Post by bombcar »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #232
kybernetikos wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely seriously I'd like to see English get rid of capitals. They're almost entirely useless and confuse learners for no benefit. On top of that kids books that use a font that makes I and l look the same annoy me too.

i an conbletelu serious too

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.

The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.

Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

from history, sometimes attributed likely incorrectly to Mark Twain

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#265

Post by bombcar »

imwillofficial wrote: post #171

Geez I get it, two billion people, 28 percent of the population. (I have no idea where this number comes from but it is vastly inflated.) All that being said, this is a decent primer on common Arabic rendering mistakes. Never hurts to support popular languages properly, such as Arabic.

> Today adherents of Islam constitute the world's second-largest religious group. An estimated 1.8 billion or more than 24% of the world population identify themselves as Muslims.

Add in non-Muslim Arabs and you've hit 2 billion right quickly. The assumption is that a Muslim can recognize the Quran's written language somewhat.

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#266

Post by irrational »

H8crilA wrote: post #252
lelandfe wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do "top-to-bottom locales" exist? Has anyone built a site with users that get utility out of these? I've usually found that the arguments for these properties revolve around, "well, what if I decide to use traditional Mongolian in the future?," which seems like the biggest case of YAGNI I can think of. I suspect their popularity is owed to tutorial authors showing off their CSS prowess. (I'm also not convinced of the…

Japanese is actually top to bottom, but they largely gave up on that idea. Probably too much hassle.

But, there are still texts that are read top to bottom. I only know that because my daughter has a Japanese friend and she has shown me some of her books and how they are read top to bottom.

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#267

Post by tmtvl »

H8crilA wrote: post #252
lelandfe wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do "top-to-bottom locales" exist? Has anyone built a site with users that get utility out of these? I've usually found that the arguments for these properties revolve around, "well, what if I decide to use traditional Mongolian in the future?," which seems like the biggest case of YAGNI I can think of. I suspect their popularity is owed to tutorial authors showing off their CSS prowess. (I'm also not convinced of the…

Japanese is actually top to bottom, but they largely gave up on that idea. Probably too much hassle.

Same with Mongolian, but JP goes TBRL (Top to Bottom, Right to Left), Mongolian goes TBLR. Wikipedia has an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system#Directionality

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#268

Post by jfk13 »

lelandfe wrote: post #261
disintegrator wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's YAGNI if it required going out of your way to add something on top of your project. CSS logical properties mirror traditional properties one-for-one. Once you know about them why would you go back to older layout properties? The need to support different locales is really a question of what product you're building or audiences your targeting. e-commerce, news sites, social networks... they seem like good…

I love supporting different locales, and have shipped sites for multiple continents. I don't know if your locale in question exists. Forget my question on your users getting utility out of this. Have you ever seen a site, any site , that supports switching to top-to-bottom writing? Against what future are we proofing – a new language arising?

The site of the Office of the President of Mongolia is available in top-to-bottom traditional Mongolian script: https://president.mn/mng/

Other examples (e.g. vertical Japanese) aren't too hard to find: https://nishinokensetsukogyo.co.jp https://ok-maru.jp etc.

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#269

Post by jeroenhd »

lelandfe wrote: post #250
disintegrator wrote: post #213

Tangentially, for those doing web development, CSS has a bunch of "logical" properties [1] that adapt to the locale of the user agent. For example, you can swap out `margin-left` and `margin-bottom` in your CSS with `margin-inline-start` and `margin-block-end` respectively. Similarly, `text-align` accepts start/end instead of left/right. Even if you're not targetting right-to-left or top-to-bottom locales, it's easy…

Do "top-to-bottom locales" exist? Has anyone built a site with users that get utility out of these? I've usually found that the arguments for these properties revolve around, "well, what if I decide to use traditional Mongolian in the future?," which seems like the biggest case of YAGNI I can think of. I suspect their popularity is owed to tutorial authors showing off their CSS prowess. (I'm also not convinced of the…

Here's a guide to styling such text: https://www.w3.org/International/articles/vertical-text/

Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese originally, but computers have made horizontal writing more common on the internet. Modern Vietnamese is also written in a variation of the Latin script, of course.

Mongolian still uses the vertical Mongolian script, though Cyrillic script m has also been introduced in Mongolia during Soviet times and seems to be common inside Mongolia. However, the Mongolian government seems to be moving back to using the original Mongolian script. Furthermore, the Mongolian people inside China never took up the Cyrillic writing system.

Websites can and do use the vertical script: https://president.mn/mng/ http://khumuunbichig.montsame.mn/index.php?home&readnews=572

Google uses the Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet (https://www.google.com/?hl=mn) so even companies that seem to have a page in every single language don't seem to bother with supporting the original script. This is probably because the Mongolian speakers inside China can't make much use of Google anyway.

Funnily enough, Mongolian is one of the few known scripts not only written vertically but also left to right, unlike other Asian vertical scripts (which go right to left).

Re: Help! Is This Arabic?

#270

Post by lelandfe »

jfk13 wrote: post #268
lelandfe wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love supporting different locales, and have shipped sites for multiple continents. I don't know if your locale in question exists. Forget my question on your users getting utility out of this. Have you ever seen a site, any site , that supports switching to top-to-bottom writing? Against what future are we proofing – a new language arising?

The site of the Office of the President of Mongolia is available in top-to-bottom traditional Mongolian script: https://president.mn/mng/ Other examples (e.g. vertical Japanese) aren't too hard to find: https://nishinokensetsukogyo.co.jp https://ok-maru.jp etc.

We're looking for vertical to horizontal switching. Not just examples of vertical writing.

Almost all extant vertically-written languages are more commonly seen horizontally on the web. Vertical Japanese on the web (from my American understanding) is a design choice, and is notably absent from mainstays like https://www.yahoo.co.jp/

That is to say, it is unlikely that a site's language switcher would opt for top-to-bottom writing.

Edit: the Mongolian president's site does have an English version! ...but it's a completely different site :( https://president.mn/en/. Still, this is the closest to a use case for logical properties I've seen, so kudos.

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