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Why do most languages...?
...write from left to right?
A left handed friend of mine was complaining today about how when he writes in pencil he gets lead all over his hands. Seeing as how most people are right-handed, do you think that has anything to do with why most languages write from left to right?
1 Answer
- Andy-kunLv 41 decade agoFavorite Answer
I'm right-handed, and I still get pencil mess all over my hands.
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Anyhow, I don't really think there's a reason. It's quite possible that many languages used to write in other directions before, but switched for any number of reasons, such as the influence of Western culture and it's left to right alphabet. One such language is Japanese; traditionally (and often still) it is written up to down in columns, from the right side of the page to the left, but on the Internet and in lots of technical books it's written left to right in rows. Ancient Greek, whose alphabet was/is the predecessor (although with a pit stop at Etruscan) of the Latin alphabet, used to be written in a style known as "boustophedron," in which one row would be written left to write, and the next would be written right to left with everything including letter shapes reversed. Now, however, later Greek and Modern Greek is written solely left to right.