Comment on Why do some Spanish/English words share the same multiple meanings?

<- View Parent
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Right hands became right because most people used them for dexterous tasks- they were correct. Left hands were ‘sinister’- as in the opposite of correct(more accurately: contrary/false/unfavorable. It comes from the Latin sinister which was the opposite of “dexter”,)

Charts were left-to-right in large part because most of the languages/alphabets in surrounding the chart were also left to right- Greek and Latin alphabets come to mind. (Arabic would be a noted exception. IIRC Asian alphabets tend to write top down first.)

I assume that most languages were written left to right simply because it was cleaner- ask a lefty about their troubles. Left to right and top to bottom keeps your hand from going over and maybe smudging freshly written text for a right handed person.

source
Sort:hotnewtop