Gutenberg in Baghdad

What about an earlier invention of the printing press? Let's say about 300 years before Gutenberg and it has to be in the islamic world! The only one thing that i'm sure now is there the arabic script wouldn't have only the cursive writing and it would a lot easier to understand! What do you guys think?
 
What about an earlier invention of the printing press? Let's say about 300 years before Gutenberg and it has to be in the islamic world! The only one thing that i'm sure now is there the arabic script wouldn't have only the cursive writing and it would a lot easier to understand! What do you guys think?
Movable type was invented 300 years before Gutenberg, in China. For it to spread to the Islamic world would be tricky, but with the Silk Road perhaps possible.
 
How in God's name would Arabic lettering for a printing press be any easier than Latin lettering?
???? Don't understand. He didn't say anything about it being EASIER, just earlier. It would, IMO, be rather harder, as Arabic has all those different positional forms for letters (up to 4 forms/letter IIRC). But that's still only ~100 glyphs, and Roman letters require 52 (upper and lower),so it should be doable.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
???? Don't understand. He didn't say anything about it being EASIER, just earlier. It would, IMO, be rather harder, as Arabic has all those different positional forms for letters (up to 4 forms/letter IIRC). But that's still only ~100 glyphs, and Roman letters require 52 (upper and lower),so it should be doable.
Considering that one page of Gutenberg's Bible required 5,000 pieces of type, I'd say that it is feasible.

Most of the medial forms look identical to the initial forms, particularly in early printed documents of these sorts. Likewise, final forms and independent forms are identical, so most characters can be done with only two forms: independent/final and initial/medial. Ayn, Ghayn, and He-hoti require four different forms. Daal, Dhaal, Raa, Zaay, Taa, Zaa, and Waaw require only one each.

All together, I count about 58 independent forms needed (60 if you want Alif-Laam, and 61 if you want the li-Llahi ligature).
 
Considering that one page of Gutenberg's Bible required 5,000 pieces of type, I'd say that it is feasible.

Most of the medial forms look identical to the initial forms, particularly in early printed documents of these sorts. Likewise, final forms and independent forms are identical, so most characters can be done with only two forms: independent/final and initial/medial. Ayn, Ghayn, and He-hoti require four different forms. Daal, Dhaal, Raa, Zaay, Taa, Zaa, and Waaw require only one each.

All together, I count about 58 independent forms needed (60 if you want Alif-Laam, and 61 if you want the li-Llahi ligature).

Right, all I knew was that SOME letters wanted 4 forms. I did know that several were functionally identical, I didn't know that many were!

So, Arabic wants 58 (60 with ligatures) whereas Latin wants ... 56? (26 letters +ae and oe digraphs; upper and lower case) plus ligatures (which are a lot more common than just 2).

So the effort involved would be almost identical, eh?

Thank you Leo for your knowledgeable comment. I suspect strongly that there are VERY few of the rest of use familiar with Arabic.
 
???? Don't understand. He didn't say anything about it being EASIER, just earlier.

Yes he did, right here:
The only one thing that i'm sure now is there the arabic script wouldn't have only the cursive writing and it would a lot easier to understand!

Not gonna pretend to be an expert on Arabic. But half of the houshold i live in is Arabic and my crash course on Arabic script and the knowledge i have of the Printing Press tells me it might not be so easy.
 
Yes he did, right here:


Not gonna pretend to be an expert on Arabic. But half of the houshold i live in is Arabic and my crash course on Arabic script and the knowledge i have of the Printing Press tells me it might not be so easy.

I believe he meant that non-cursive print Arabic would be a lot easier to understand than cursive Arabic.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I can't imagine that Arabic would adopt a block letter script solely for the purposes of printing. The first printed Arabic manuscript was produced only sixty years after the discovery of movable type in Europe, and the letters used were the familiar ligatured Arabic script.

Would it be easier to read? I suppose, although not necessarily because of the ligatures. The Arabic script is a dyslexic's nightmare.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I've said that an non-cursive Arabic script would be a lot more understandable.
It depends. Being generous, there are 17 basic letter forms that are distinguished into 28 letters solely through the use of a dot here or there (fewer still if you consider medial yaa and nuun to be identical to the medial baa-taa-thaa series, and how similar daal, dhaal, raa, and zaay are). This, IMHO, is what makes the Arabic script so difficult for learners.

Even if you separated them all you'd still have this problem. So, to avoid this problem, you'd have to adopt an entirely different script that distinguishes clearly between individual sounds with unambiguous graphemes. If you can pull that off, a cursive or ligatured variant shouldn't be too difficult to read.
 
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