On Sunday 22 December 2002 08:39, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: li'o
Now, I'd like to have someone knowing Arab, Hebrew, or some other right-to-left language describe problems involving them.
Hebrew is written right-to-left. Latin is written left-to-right. Both start at the top of the page. When a Hebrew sentence is quoted in a page written in the Latin alphabet, and a few phrases of Russian are quoted inside the Hebrew, and the line breaks in the middle of the Russian, it gets tricky.
Arabic numerals, unlike Arabic letters, are written left-to-right. Hebrews use Arabic numerals too (they use the European version). Hebrew numerals, which are letters assigned numerical values, are written right-to-left. So numbers quoted in Hebrew have the same problem as Russian quoted in Hebrew.
When written in the bare abjad, as it usually is, many Hebrew words (usually, but not always, different forms of the same word) look the same. Many Hebrew words have variant spellings. For an example of the latter, look up [[Bible Code]] and follow the "abulafia" link. There's a picture of the Abulafia Synagogue with three different spellings of "Abulafia" in one picture!
Yiddish, which is written in the Hebrew alphabet, has its own oddities. Two yoden can act as one letter and take one vowel, for instance.
phma