Isn't there a theory that writing medium effects scripts? IE the angles of Runes lended themselves well to carving. And something about left-to-right scripts was to avoid smudging.
So I wonder the writing medium Arabic was for. Roman Alphabet does lend itself reasonably well to stone work I feel.
Or is that one of those linguistic myths that doesn't play out like that.
I don’t think it’s a myth at all. Arabic was written with a reed pen or ‘qalam’ [0], and that can certainly be seen in the modern script (e.g. [1], to take the first random example I found). But its ‘joined-up’ nature seems to have been a regional style — it’s also found in scripts like Syriac, Avestan, Mandaic, Manichaean, and even the delightfully bizarre Bactrian Greek (there’s some nice samples in [2]).
There might be some stretches of imagination there, but the base is solid - cuneiform writing was definitely formed by the medium (pressing a cut reed into clay).
So I wonder the writing medium Arabic was for. Roman Alphabet does lend itself reasonably well to stone work I feel.
Or is that one of those linguistic myths that doesn't play out like that.