Directionality without prejudice

[Usama Akkad]

Hi, I've just read Yaron pronunciation of Arabic number and I think it's
totally false. It's all in a slang or not Arabic.

But you are right that numbers are usually read from right to left.


              في Sat، 11-12-2010 عند 16:59 +0200 ، كتب Yaron Shahrabani:
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Chris Scaife <scaife.chris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>         Thanks for that information Yaron,  and also for your positive
>         feedback :)
>         It is indeed interesting to learn about how numbers are spoken
>         because I don't think that Unicode standard is correct in this
>         respect.
> I'd love to assist with that, feel free to guide and consult me, my
> hobby is linguistics and I have many connections we can use. 
> 
>         
>         
>         I do hope to proceed with my bidirectional terminal emulator,
>         but have discovered that I cannot make it work with things
>         like ncurses library when directionality on my display widget
>         is under control of such a complicated algorithm. Thus Gtk,
>         Pango and Cairo display code have become a dead end :(
> There is an old bug in GNOME showing reversed Hebrew in the task
> manager for years now and nothing was done so far so unfortunately you
> are possibly right ☺ 
> 
>         
>         
>         I am currently learning how to use the AGG library which
>         includes excellent support for Windows as well as Posix
>         compliant systems. Alas it all takes time especially because
>         due to other situations I was not programming for a great many
>         years.
> The Heb-bugzap list is mainly in English and we will be delighted to
> use English only for this discussion, Most of us are pretty fluent,
> Shachar has already replied, he began reading your work and I think he
> liked it so far, pay attention that Shachar has his own company and he
> doesn't like to be bothered so keep your messages to him as short as
> possible and if you post an article just send him the link. 
> 
>         
>         
>         I'll try to get on your mailing list now, but I can't read any
>         Hebrew or Arabic myself and depend entirely on Google
>         translator
> Let me help you when needed, My Arabic is not that good but I got some
> friends from the open source community who can, just don't hesitate to
> ask. 
> 
>         
>         
>         regards,
>         Chris Scaife
> Kind regards,
> Yaron Shahrabani. 
> 
>         
>         
>         On 11 December 2010 02:27, Yaron Shahrabani
>         <sh.yaron at gmail.com> wrote:
>                 Hey Chris! lovely article!
>                 To support your claims (Although I'm not a native
>                 Arabic speaker) I can add that in Arabic you pronounce
>                 number in the opposite direction:
>                 0-10 same ol'
>                 11 - Had 'Ashar / Had Ta'ash (The second form is
>                 derived from an Ancient Jewish Arabic colloquial
>                 spoken mostly by Jewish Iraqian living in Israel like
>                 my grand mother)
>                 12 - Thnein Ashar / Thnein Ta'ash
>                 13 - Thlat Ashar / Thlat Ta'ash
>                 etc.
>                 The difference appear from now on:
>                 20 - 'Ishrin
>                 21 - Wahad (one) u(and) 'Ishrin (twenty)
>                 22 - Tnein (two) u 'Ishrin
>                 etc.
>                 When it comes to Hundred:
>                 100 - Maia / Mia
>                 101 - [Maia / Mia] u wahad
>                 So the reading direction changes along the way meaning
>                 that 121 would be:
>                 Mi'a u wahad u 'Ishrin
>                 
>                 
>                 That's all about counting in Arabic.
>                 I would consult my fellow open source activists and if
>                 needed we will translate your document and use it but
>                 first I have to send it there.
>                 Our mailing list called heb-bugzap and you can
>                 subscribe
>                 via: http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/heb-bugzap
>                 We will discuss about this matter there.
>                 
>                 
>                 Thank you very much,
>                 Yaron Shahrabani
>                         <Hebrew translator>
>                 
>                 
>                 
>                 On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 1:35 PM, Chris Scaife
>                 <scaife.chris at gmail.com> wrote:
>                 
>                         
>                         Not that long ago I started a project to make
>                         a bidirectional terminal emulator according to
>                         the Unicode standards.
>                         This was prompted by problems I encountered on
>                         a different project
>                         I've been having a good think about
>                         directionality of text and have just uploaded
>                         my R2L.html document.
>                         It details my thoughts on the issues and I
>                         will greatly value any feedback I get.
>                         Anyone interested can find it in my original
>                         internationalization project:
>                         http://code.google.com/p/speaknumber/downloads/list
>                         There is also a jpg image and a css file that
>                         goes with it.
>                         
>                         
>                         Thanks for reading :)
>                         
>                         
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>                         
>                 
>                 
>         
>         
> 
>