- From: John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
- Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 08:40:11 -0500
- To: Paul Hastings <paul@sustainableGIS.com>
- Cc: www-international@w3.org
Paul Hastings scripsit:
> is Punjabi actually rtl?
That's the wrong question: languages don't have directions, scripts do.
The proper question is "Is the Punjabi language ever written in an
RTL script?" and the answer is "Yes, in the Arabic script, mostly in
Pakistan."
Now if you look in Ethnologue, you find that the name "Punjabi" (or
"Panjabi" as they spell it) is ambiguous. There is Eastern Panjabi and
Western Panjabi. The line between them is fuzzy (what is technically
called a "dialect continuum") and does not follow the international
boundary exactly, but in general it's not too surprising tha it's Western,
or Pakistan, Punjabi that's written in the Arabic script -- when it is
written at all. Eastern, or India, Punjabi is written in Gurmukhi script
(a LTR script), and sometimes in Devanagari script (also LTR).
--
We call nothing profound jcowan@reutershealth.com
that is not wittily expressed. John Cowan
--Northrop Frye (improved) http://www.reutershealth.com
Received on Tuesday, 8 March 2005 13:40:36 UTC