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Another step towards westernization. True, as the article points out, traditional top-to-bottom Chinese still remains, but one cannot deny that the existence of a left-to-right option is a step towards westernization. Arguing that changes to a language are beneficial due to the greater ease of communication is a very slippery slope. You could use the same exact argument to support the claim that everyone should surrender their language in favor of a single common language.
This is interesting for sure. Letter-forms have always been in a state of flux for both societal and technological reasons. Now that it is possible for us to have the typographical history goggles on, it is nice to notice when history is taking place. The fun question of how people will respond to this alteration awaits to be answered.
A long article on this subject appeared in the business section of the New York Times, Monday, March 15, 2004. Mr. Abulhab has received a patent on his invention, which will be marketed to type companies.
I would never use a patented alphabet.
> Another step towards westernization.
You know, I feel sort of like that too (and it’s something I hate with a cap H), but I’ve been exposed to Saad’s posts (on the ATypI list), and have had some personal exchanges with him too, and he’s a proud Arab. I guess when you make something, different people will see different merits/uses in it. Dangerous, yes, but if the intent is good that’s already better than average.
The patent issue does make me uncomfortable though.
(I’ll alert Saad to this thread – he’ll have some valuable input.)
hhp
What are you fears about an alphabet that
is patented? If we could, I think we’d all
have our designs patended, no?
-Jim
The article in the NYTimes business section of 3/15/04 was not long,despite what Moreland Hogan states above. It was not long enough. If a language is easier to learn, more people will be able to learn it, patented or not. Education is liberating. Mr Abulhabs vision and work is amazing….I see what he’s done not as a concession to the “western” world but as a compliment and key to a language and culture he clearly loves. What a gift. He is also enabling that beloved language to join the computer age.
(Mr Browne doesn’t have to learn it if he feels as he does. Maria Montessori wisely patented her methods and implements….these days patenting may be a safe thing to do)
> What are you fears about an alphabet that is patented?
That there hasn’t been one all this time might be indicative of a problem. For example, if somebody besides Saad wants to make a font based on this alphabet, would he have to pay? Not that I think there will a large demand for a great variety of styles based on this alphabet, but the richness in visual culture that I’m sure Saad wants to promote would be seriously stifled.
But really, exactly how is an alphabet patent defined anyway? How do you know if somebody has wrongly copied -more like merely used- it?
hhp
> I see what he’s done not as a concession to the “western” world but as a compliment and key to a language and culture he clearly loves.
I do not deny that he does have noble intentions, but I have a hard time seeing this alphabet as something besides a concession to the western world. Unless I interpreted the article incorrectly, the reason for its existence is entirely due to the fact that people who are familiar with western (left-to-right) languages have a hard time learning Arabic. So it seems like this alteration was made to Arabic to accommodate people of western culture/language. How would you feel if alterations were made to your language just so it could more closely resemble a language spoken by a group of people that have a hard time learning yours? I am reminded of the Dr. Seuss Butter Battle Book.
As HRANT noted:
> if the intent is good that’s already better than average
I gladly agree with this statement. It is nice to know there are innovators with good intentions out there who focus on the general good rather than just the profitable. If this alteration enables better understanding to be reached more easily, then I support it, but I think we (americans) should be cautious of favoring such ideas. We are already under global scrutiny for behaving imperialistically.
> it seems like this alteration was
> made to Arabic to accommodate people
> of western culture/language.
Or Arabs living in the west. I think it’s primarily a tool to fight assimilation among young Arabs. A key feature of this effort is that it’s not left-to-right, it’s both.
BTW, according to an elaboration by Saad on the ATypI list, it seems that the person who wrote the article totally warped the patent aspect of the font/alphabet. How shocking that the NYT can be so sloppy… ;-)
hhp
The Mutamathil type style is not the first Arabic type trying to lift the veil of calligraphy from that very powerful and beautiful script. Arabic typography today, which is heavily influenced with the beautiful calligraphy schools of the past, was simply shaped by forces that valued its beauty much more than its functionality. We too love the veil of calligraphy but we also love the flexibility and utility of the Arabic script.
NYT patent journalist may have complicated our position by calling our type style a new alphabet. It is not. Numerous Arab, Urdu, and Farsi speakers read the sample texts on our site: arabetics.com without any significant problems. We are simply presenting a new type style to live next to the existing traditional types. A type style simple enough for users and developers, *and* for the machine. In the last two days we have received numerous emails from users hungry for an Arabic typography that can finally serve the function and purpose of typography.
As we stated in a different forum, simplification and adaptation to new needs are not westernization. The Latin script has historically adapted the simpler “accent” of the typographic machine, but it cannot claim ownership to the concept of simplification or even directionality! Even 1000 years ago, Arabic calligraphers in Baghdad have created a left to right caligraphy style named “Khatt al-Maraya”
From John Murson:
“.. but I have a hard time seeing this alphabet as something besides a concession to the western world ..”
I must admit that since my childhood I was and still very obsessed with Arabic calligraphy. But when computers took over my obsession become a deep fear for the future of the Arabic script. I am simply still living the “Ataturk complex” even after 70 years! I feel the “threat” of even the slightest joke on an Azeri web site about the Arabic script! It is a concession to flexibility or “to fight assimilation” as Hrant wrote. But defiantly not “to the western world”
From Hrant Papazian:
“..The patent issue does make me uncomfortable though..”
Me too. I thought about this issue very hard. The majority of patents are very hard to enforce anyway especially in fonts. But patents are good tools to secure funds and exposure. And fund is what the new open Arabic typography efforts needs. The owner of a patent can elect to not use it at all.
Do I understand it correctly that this patent only is effective in United States and other countries that respect U.S. patents?
Adam
I can understand the motivations of Saad. However, I do not agree that the actual status of the Arabic script is hard to program. Programmer myself, writing Arabic software is not that hard. The storage space is similar to storing roman-letters text (Note that the internal representation of the letters is different than the script or the shape of the letter, and is more compact). In addition, Unicode supports easily almost any language. This is almost supported in all the architectures.
In my opinion, 15 years ago, this might be a problem, but not now. (Similar suggestions existed 20 years ago, but didn’t find supporters)
A second note, I did not see what is the advantage of writing Arabic from left to right. So, when I learn reading Arabic from left to right, how should I do to read “normally” from right to left?
Unfortunately, Saad’s concept does not take in account the cognitive aspect of the language, which is an important characteristic of any language.
Are traditional arabic alphabets significantly more difficult to design for than the roman? If I remember correctly, Gutenberg had over 96 ligatures in his 42-line Bible. If the Arabic alphabet has 22 (?) letters, each of which has four variations, that is still only 88 characters. With OpenType, these characters should be easy enough to implement, right? Type-settingly speaking, I wouldn’t mind the “dancing screen” effect that is mentioned in the NYT article. I would think that it would be kind of cool. It would brighten my InDesign-using day, even.
Dan Reynolds wrote:
I wouldn’t mind the “dancing screen” effect that is mentioned in the NYT article. I would think that it would be kind of cool.
Slim wrote:
A second note, I did not see what is the advantage of writing Arabic from left to right.
True and not true. Technology *only today* is a lot more advanced and the Unicode standards made the representations of the world scripts a lot easier. But our point is that we do not want the Arabic script to be a prisoner of the stage of technology advancement. How about a future emerging phenomena that we do not know about yet? Being in this field since MS DOS Arabic and Sakhr, I remember the outrageous prices charged then. Even today, a user on the English version of Windows 2000 is a prisoner of the Build version of USP10.dll!
Similar suggestions existed not 20 years ago but even 70 years ago. But they were always shot down on the false, unproven, assumptions that users will reject them. No one ever put a real study of users attitude. It was done mostly in closed groups of typography people and programmers with a token of feedback from prospective customers in the Arab world. I think allowing programmers to handle the future of a script is a bad idea. Because programmers will find the challenges of Arabic, like the dancing glyphs “cool”, intriguing and captivating. It may be so. But types and fonts are about choice; utilization by 5% of the users is as good as 50%. I learned Arabic right to left and I love it that way. It is simply the habit of the eye. But I would not mind someone learning the glyphs the other direction. BTH there are applications to bi-directionality. A friend of mine in the aviation field was trained to read Arabic both ways!
> there are applications to bi-directionality.
Not least in using boustrophedon setting and minimizing the need for leading (= greater economy) as well as “carriage return”s during reading (= greater readability).
hhp
I think that a valid point about typography and programming has been raised here: I certainly do not think that technology should dictate usability, or choice. Ease (and delight!) in use should be first and foremost in all areas of design.
I am not a computer programmer. I’d like to look at this development as another element in the history of typography. Fortunately, the history of typography is broad enough, and long enough to have seen similarities to this before. An alphabetic system like Arabetics is a good thing to have, as long as it doesn’t replace the traditional forms out-right.
What I was meant to ask was more along the following lines: Gutenberg used many more “letters” in his Latin Bible than we use today, or are even on our keyboard. Granted, Unicode and things like OpenType allow them to be more accessible on a computer than they were in 1984 (or 1994), but most of us are never going to use most of Gutenberg’s ligatuers in type.
A large part of that is not for aesthetic reasons, but rather because as latin-based typography developed, and letters became more italianate (less like blackletter texturas), these characters became too burdensome to use.
I don’t think that they are as burdensome to use as they were even ten years ago. The latin alphabet is narrow–while not widen it up again?
The arabic alphabet is, as far as I know, wide. Why not celebrate that?
Here is a side question for Mr. Abdulhab: As your Arabetics systems becomes more widely licensed, and used, how will they available typefaces be developed and distributed? Does your patent prevent other designer from designing new fonts that would fit into your framework? Would they be able to license them directly, through a vendor independently, or would that all have to be arranged through you?
> The latin alphabet is narrow—while not widen it up again?
Yes! My sentiments exactly. Minimalism is counter to human cognition. We are not computers.
BTW, Arabic’s main complexity isn’t just that there are four “cases”, it’s that a letter’s case depends on context. Also, Arabic actually needs hundreds of ligatures if you want to make it look authentic, and this is what causes the -much more complex- “shaping engine” aspect, where something like the baseline even can be seen as flexible… :-/
hhp
Exciting news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3522026.stm
hhp
Dan Reynolds wrote:
>>The arabic alphabet is, as far as I know, wide. Why not celebrate that?
We do. That is why we emphasized that the Mutamathil type is not meant to replace traditional Arabetic types.
>>Does your patent prevent other designer from designing new fonts that would fit into your framework?
Our main goal in designing the Mutamathil type style is to encourage open and free Arabic type designs that are not limited by the historic calligraphy rules. We will not allow our patent to become an obstacle to achieving this goal. As I mentioned before we patented a type not an alphabet. The framework of our design is not entirely new. Many Arabic type designers developed in the past and will develop in the future non-calligraphic types similar to ours.
This is just too cool to believe, and I love it.
Westernization is in your heads. I don’t give a fuck about it.
I guess even Yassar Abbar *great* typeface will inevitably be considered “western”. You cannot ignore the stylizations happened in the Latin alphabet over centuries and centuries.
And I guess people hated the Unified Arabic experiment Khattar did in 1947.
And Ahmad, by Ahmad Humeid of Syntax Digital, well I guess it’s surely perceived “too cool” and “too trendy”, to be non-western.
The west sucks, but so does the whole world, so put your hearts in peace.
P.S. Among the experiments of Huda Abifares’ students there’s a typeface inspired by Sand. This *is* dangerous, not designing clever and cool new ways to write. ;-)
I forgot: my *big* thanks to Mr. Abulhab!
I hope to be able to know him via e-mail in the future!
Claudio Piccinini wrote:
>>Westernization is in your heads
Well. If getting rid of donkeys and making and using cars means “westernization is in our heads”, then let it be!
Mr. Piccinini
You are very welcome. I am happy you liked our design.
BTH: According to OED, English “Coffee” came from Italian “Cafe”, from Tukish “Gehva”, from Arabic “Qahwa”, Can we call drinking coffee “Arabization”? :)
Especially if you take it with sugar = azucar = al-sukkar.
hhp
I was Googling my name and stumbled across this interesting discussion. I just want to make a few comments:
1. On Westernization: I saw my typeface ‘Ahmad’ mentioned here (for the full story check my blog. ‘Ahmad’ is so accepted nowadays (I recently saw it on an Islamic charity’s poster) that one can no longer say it is perceived as Western. It was perceived as weird and not legible in the beginning.
2. On the ‘one-glyph-per-letter issue’: first of all, let me make it clear that I consider myself a ‘liberal’ when it comes to the Arabic script. Innovations/inventions like those of Mr Abulhab are always interesting for me. But I seem to be at loss when it comes to the practical applications of such typefaces, especially that Mr Abulhab says that his system is not a replacement for the contemporary Arabic multi-glyph typefaces.
I can sort of see the usefulness when it comes to teaching Arabic to older non-Arabs. But whoever wants to learn Arabic will, sooner or later, have to deal with Arabic script in its multiglyph form (as found in books, newspapers, websites and even sms messages).
From a technical point of view, there have been Arabic DTP packages that work fine since the dawn of the Mac. Even in the 1700′s there already was beatiful Arabic metal type that not only accomodated traditional Arabic glyphs, but also all kinds of ligatures and extensions.
Again, I am not a defender of adhering to the formal ‘rules’ of Arabic calligraphy when designing digital type. But I do not see much benefit from a one-glyph-per-letter strategy.
> one can no longer say it is perceived as Western.
1) That might mean the reader has become more western because of the font (and others like it), and simply doesn’t recognize it as anything “different”. Americans from the Southern part of the US don’t think they have an accent when speaking English, but in the rest of the country people think they do!
2) It’s not the thoughts people consciously articulate that count – it’s what they feel, and that’s much harder to extract. Latinized Arabic type is saying something to the subconscious of the reader, bypassing all the conscious “noise”.
Most of all, we need to ask ourselves what we’re gaining and what we’re losing when we make Latinized non-Latin fonts. Everything matters. And context matters too. Arabs are less threatened culturally than Armenians for example, so Armenian Latinized type is much more damaging. But any group of people under attack need to stay on their toes.
hhp
Haven’t you heard of what the God-damned computer nerds call “printer-friendly?” What they mean is printer-efficient or fiscally-efficient (for we who have to pay for copies) or environmentally correct.
Re mutamathil: The US Army is seeking people to translate Arabic into English. I pointed out that it is stupid to translate one of the most difficult languages into another of the most difficult languages. It would make much more sense to translate Arabic into simplified English, which I created. Alas, military intelligence is an oxymoron, even after 9-11. It took a week for my certified letter to reach them and another week for the return receipt to reach me. They never did reply. I appreciate your comments about patenting an alphabet and will keep them in mind if or when I do it.
You know, I’ve always heard that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. But I learned it as a child, and children learn easy. When I was not a child anymore, I tried to learn Chinese. This was very hard. Alot of Germans I know say that German is a very hard language. It didn’t feel that way to me, but hey. After Chinese, anything should be easy.
Ed is probably right in saying that Arabic is one of the worlds most difficult languages. But, come to think of it, are there any languages that are NOT difficult, or complicated to learn?
Saying that everyone in the world should just use English, or any other language for that matter, is silly.
I also think that using a simplified, non-language version of a language is just as silly. I think that it cheapens the value of language in general. (This is not referring to Arabetics. Arabetics is another way to write Arabic, it is not simplifying the language, only the alphabet.)
We americans don’t not learn Arabic because it is difficult, we do not learn Arabic beacause, as a rule, we don’t see much value in speaking anything but English… to ourselves or to others.
This is a cop-out. Now we are reaping what we sowed.
That isn’t silly at all; it is tragic and sad.
Different languages are easy/hard in different ways. I learned Arabic and English about the same time, and overall I think the former was harder to write, but the latter harder to speak. It’s very easy to learn “broken English”, but it’s extremely hard to communicate in squeaky-clean English. This creates a barrier between natives (not that their English is generally so hot either…) and immigrants (of which there’s a lot). In Arabic, assuming your vocal chords aren’t too set in their ways (this is where youth helps a lot), you can learn to speak it pretty well pretty easily. And “street Arabic” in Lebanon for example is much harder to learn, since it’s not documented well. So I guess what I’m saying is it’s not so easy to compare scripts/languages. :-)
hhp
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There were some people above concerned about “westernization”. I just wanted to point out a few things. I think they needn’t feel it’s such a bad thing, as this kind of cross-cultural exchange/influence has always existed. Large/powerful/dominant societies always affect the societies around them. However, this is usually a good thing:
When Greece was the most powerful/advanced society in Europe, the Romans stole/internalized many Greek values and knowledge, from their gods to their alphabet and lots of their language and knowledge, etc…
This is what helped Rome become the superpower it became. Rome spread what was essentially Greek knowledge etc.. throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.
When Rome fell and Europe was cast into the Middle Ages, the Byzantine and Arab societies wich had taken so much from Rome and Greece rose to prominence. During this time, Europe was languishing while Arabs were building a vast, extremely advanced empire. They preserved the ancient knowledge of the Romans.
When Europe took Arab knowledge (Arabicization?), that led to the Renaissance and then the discovery of America, which became the lastest in a long line of Superpowers.
So, this “westernization” can only lead to one thing: the evetual rise of some other superpower and the lessening of America’s dominance in the World.
Another reason: it’s pretty arrogant. People complain about how everywhere is being “westernized”. They mean people are getting fridges and cars and cell phones. What a shame… By asking societies not to change, you are asking them to remain behind the West. They aren’t becoming Westernized, they are just progressing- the same way the western nations once did.
When you have to fight every minute of every day to keep the next generation speaking your language, you think the exact opposite of that. Abstract potential global benefit is one thing, but to expect threatened minorities to simply keel over culturally is not only deplorable, it’s unrealistic.
hhp
It’s not up to the individual to protect the nation. If it makes more sense for someone to speak English, it’s unfair to limit them for the sake of their “nation”.
And, with somewhere around 200 million speakers, I really don’t think too many people are “fighting night and day” for the language’s survival.
In the end, it’s you who are still exerting your western imperialism by stopping other cultures from progressing just so they can remain quaint and “pure”, the subject of National Geographic and “cultural” vacations.
Furthermore, it is the intense focus on the idea of a “minority” in the first place which causes problems. Focus on the individual, even if it endangers the “nation” or “culture”, and people will be much better off. Why is it so important to protect a culture beyond what is practical? Why not just embrace change? The idea of protecting the nation is a construct of power-hungry politicians and religious zealots.
In fact, the first sentence of your paragraph sounds like a quote from Rene Levesque. Further distancing oneself from the powerful and their language means limiting oneself to a less powerful language, thus limiting oneself economically, which can only hurt the “nation” or group concerned in the long run.
My point isn’t global benifit, but individual benifit. If China does indeed become the next America-style superpower, will you refrain from learning Mandarin or letting Mandarin words enter English, in order to protect our endangered “nation”? It would be much better for you, the individual, to embrace the dominant (ie Chinese) culture than reject it.
> It’s not up to the individual to protect the nation.
Wrong.
> If it makes more sense for someone to speak English, it’s unfair to limit them for the sake of their “nation”.
Sense? More like psychological lethargy, in the land of the SUV. Limit? What’s limiting is losing languages to English.
> with somewhere around 200 million speakers
There are 8 million Armenians.
Progress? Losing your identity to a gray mindless blob is not progress, quite the opposite.
> Focus on the individual, even if it endangers the “nation” or “culture”, and people will be much better off.
Only if you think culture is useless, and all people need is pizza and football.
Clearly, you have no idea how the other half lives.
hhp
I appreciate when you take your time even for a simple reply to such generalizations, Hrant.
My old posts here were just excited to the idea of that “unified” Arabic graphically speaking (read: as an alternative of sorts).
Writing forms are an integral part of individual cultures, precious to be preserved.
>> It’s not up to the individual to protect the nation.
>Wrong.
This is a basic matter of perception that one can’t really argue over. Either you believe the individual is more important than the nation or vice versa.
>> If it makes more sense for someone to speak English, it’s unfair to limit them for the sake of their “nation”.
>Sense? More like psychological lethargy, in the land of the SUV. Limit? What’s limiting is losing languages to English.
I’m not talking about lazy Americans. What I mean is, when an Arabic-, Chinese-, and Spanish-speaker are in the same room, they will likely use English to communicate. I’m not saying they should use it everyday, and I’m not even saying they should use it as a lingua franca. I’m all for a more neutral auxiliary language like Esperanto, precisely because it doesn’t endanger other cultures. Meanwhile, it’s just not feasible to conduct international trade in Esperanto right now.
>> with somewhere around 200 million speakers
>There are 8 million Armenians.
I was talking about Arabic.
>Progress? Losing your identity to a gray mindless blob is not progress, quite the opposite.
Multilingualism is progress. Keeping people ignorant for the sake of “protecting” the “culture” is quite the opposite. Gaining purchasing power is progress. Keeping people poor so their society can stay the same is quite the opposite. Getting a cookie-cutter house and a gas-guzzling car and designer clothes isn’t Americanization, it’s modernization (at least, the negative aspect of it). It just happened in the West first. Trying to force other cultures to remain unchanged in a changing world is hypocritical. Why not force Americans to go back to the way they lived 100 years ago? Why does America get to progress unfettered while the rest of the world should remain an untouched playground for rich Americans? “Globalization” is a construct of greedy Americans.
>> Focus on the individual, even if it endangers the “nation” or “culture”, and people will be much better off.
>Only if you think culture is useless, and all people need is pizza and football.
What’s more important if you have nothing: producing great works of art or getting a fridge? Notice how only rich societies have the luxury of producing great bodies or culture such as art, architecture, music, and literature. First comes money, then comes vast cultural wealth. If speaking English opens more opportunities for each person to make more money, then that enriches the entire society, allowing it to flower culturally. I don’t watch football, and, as an Italian, I’m most offended by much of the “pizza” in North America.
>Clearly, you have no idea how the other half lives.
It is you who don’t understand how the other half lives. You don’t seem to understand that there are still people in this world who have never brushed their teeth. If they brush their teeth, is that Americanization? Just because Americans do it as well? Do Americans have a monopoly on modern life?
You seem to think I’m some white-bread US Republican. I’m an immigrant. I live in Canada. I speak four languages (admittedly not enough for an educated person), have a post secondary education, and am a member of both the Liberal party and the US Democrats Abroad.