What languages write top to bottom?

Top-To-Bottom Languages These include Mongolian, Chinese, certain Japanese dialects, and a couple Korean dialects, though some are written vertically from left to right, and some are written vertically from right to left. Chinese, Korean and Japanese are also often written horizontally, too, from left to right.

What languages are read vertically?

Vertical Text in the World The vertical style of writing is said to be a feature found in languages that use Chinese characters (Chinese, Korean, Japanese,) or a mixture of them and other characters, and write them in a way that they are arranged as if in a square going from top to bottom.

Why are ancient languages written right to left?

Ancient Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic were chiselled into stones in ancient days. Words and pictographs had to be recorded on a visual medium, such as hard objects, because paper did not exist. For this reason, many ancient languages found right-to-left writing to be more favorable.

How many languages are written backwards?

There are 12 languages that are written from the right to the left: Arabic, Aramaic, Azeri, Divehi, Fula, Hebrew, Kurdish, N’ko, Persian, Rohingya, Syriac and Urdu. Arabic is most used of these twelve languages.

Is Japanese written vertically?

The text is in the traditional tategaki (“vertical writing”) style; it is read down the columns and from right to left, like traditional Chinese. When written vertically, Japanese text is written from top to bottom, with multiple columns of text progressing from right to left.

Is Aramaic written right to left?

Syriac and Mandaean (Mandaic) scripts are derived from Aramaic and are written RTL. Many other ancient and historic scripts derived from Aramaic inherited its right-to-left direction. Several languages have both Arabic RTL and non-Arabic LTR writing systems.

Is Arabic read from top to bottom?

Arabic runs from right to left, but Chinese is written in vertical columns, from top to bottom, and the lines read from left to right.

Is Korean written vertically?

Traditionally, Korean writing has been vertical, with columns running right to left. In 1988, The Hankyoreh became the first Korean newspaper to use horizontal writing, and after 1990, all other major newspapers followed suit. Today, major Korean newspapers hardly ever run text vertically.

Can Japanese be written horizontally?

Traditionally, Japanese was only written vertically. Most historical documents are written in this style. Most general books are set in vertical text since most Japanese readers can comprehend the written language either way. But horizontal written Japanese is the more common style in the modern era.

Is Chinese written from top to bottom?

Ideographic languages (e.g. Japanese, Korean, Chinese) are more flexible in their writing direction. They are generally written left-to-right, or vertically top-to-bottom (with the vertical lines proceeding from right to left). However, they are occasionally written right to left.