Re: OT (Kind of): Determining whether Locales are left-to-right

From: Michael Everson (everson@egt.ie)
Date: Thu Dec 07 2000 - 07:35:29 EST


Ar 01:47 -0800 2000-12-07, scríobh Antoine Leca:

>> >Urdu written in Nagari script is left-to-right? This is new to me...
>>
>> No, Urdu written in Nagari script is Hindi.
>
>There are a number of Muslim people that insist on naming it Urdu rather
>than Hindi. Since both codes exist, and hence if you look at the "locale"
>you are in fact looking after the language code, as a result, you "should"
>be able to deal with requests such as "Urdu written in Nagari"; or "Urdu
>written in Latin script"... (why not? after all, it is more practical when
>you are using some random computer.)

Antoine, it was a joke. Humour.

>Furthermore, as a language Urdu predates Hindi by a wide margin (several
>centuries). And between Medieval times and XIXth century, this language,
>named Urdu, was written alternatively using Nagari or Arabic script.
>Now I agree that this is irrelevant to the current problem.

Um, my understanding is that the "Hindustani" language (so called
"Hindoostani" by the British way back when) is really fairly uniform, apart
from the alphabet it is written (Arabic by Muslims, Nagari by Hindus, to
use the sectarian taxonomy), and the fact that for much of the higher
terminology, Urdu tends to borrow from Arabic and Hindi tends to borrow
from Sanskrit. You may mean that "as a written language" Urdu predates
Hindi.

Michael Everson ** Everson Gunn Teoranta ** http://www.egt.ie
15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland
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