[Cushman]

Ah, I see. I think you may have it backwards, though: script Arabic developed around the same time as lower-case letters in Greek and Latin (very roughly 0CE), coinciding one presumes with growing use of paper for writing. While Latin eventually incorporated its older "upper-case" forms with a minor grammatical function, Arabic discarded them altogether as antiquated. In that sense, one might well make the case that Arabic is in fact the more "modern" alphabet.

[gordonguthrie]

You're quite correct. The old 'Latin' script (our uppercase letters) where revived in the renaissance - and were slowly merged with the Hunnish script (our lower case letters) - about the same time as they adopted Arabic numerals (read right to left, for added confusion).

Other alphabets (Greek and Cyrillic) created capital letters in emulation much later (circa 1800's). Most alphabets/sylabaries (Arabic, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, etc) don't have upper and lower cases.

Likewise punctuation, which prosidic languages (like English) need to signal stress and emphasis which can transform meaning, but which are also absent from lots of other writing systems.

I think talk of 'more modern' or 'less modern' is nonsense though. Writing is an imperfect representation of speaking, and whatever works is just fine.

[siculars]

Hebrew has upper and lower case.

[neonkiwi]

No—there are cursive and block letters, but one is not the lower case version of the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet

[meepmorp]

I don't think the timeline for the development of the Arabic script is quite right. I believe it's more typically put 3-400 CE, with the Nabatean script slowly accruing Arabic-like features over time.

Of course, my knowledge of the history of writing extends to a single undergrad course and a quick skim of Wikipedia as a refresher. I'll happily admit I'm wrong if that turns out to be the case.

[Cushman]

I didn't mean to imply modern Arabic script came to be then -- it wasn't what we'd call Arabic today before the Quran -- only that evolution from inscribed block capitals to written script was happening at around the same time as that transition in other languages.

Anyway, in this context I'm counting 300BCE - 300CE as "very roughly 0CE".

[the_rosentotter]

Even so it still seems apparent that modern Latin alphabets have been adapted for typesetting, whereas even contemporary written Arabic seems to remain optimized for handwriting. It seems reading Arabic is a lot more difficult than reading Latin based writing, language issues aside, simply becuase the letters are all joined together.