[sharjeel]

> Sindhi, for example, is a naskh based language. Punjabi, which my parents spoke, on the other hand, prefers nastaliq, and regionally the two places are adjacet.

Saying that Sindhi is Naskh based language while Punjabi is Nastaleeq based language is like saying English is Arial based language while French is Times New Roman based.

[_delirium]

The difference is considerably larger than Arial vs. Times. I think it's closer to discussing, in earlier centuries, which European languages used blackletter scripts versus Latin-style scripts. Which is something people actually do discuss, and at times it was a major political issue.

[alieteraz]

Respectfully, you are ignoring European history where certain languages were pretty much exclusively rendered in certain "scripts." This was also the case -- and still kind of is -- in the subcontinent. Anshuman Pandey has an interesting anecdote about how the British tried to "standardize" a script in the early 20th century, only to discover that everyone wrote in different scripts and didn't want to change. In the end, the British tried to force everyone to write in Roman letters, but that failed too.

[eshvk]

This is rather confusing. IIRC both Arial and Times New Roman let you express all 26 alphabets. Now if Naskh has Nastaleeq have differing number of characters, is this a mere font issue or is there something more fundamental differing between the two?

[restalis]

You got it wrong. European Latin-based scripts are not identical. They have, besides the basic Latin set of letters, different diacritics. The original Latin alphabet has/had less than 26 letters, and the European languages had to adapt (either by supplement it, or by expressing sounds through combinations of existing letters). Now, a font may or may not have all the European letters, but that makes it merely incomplete from a language's perspective, not that it belongs or not to a given language.

[alieteraz]

There are two issues. One is that some operating systems (ios) don't offer the full alphabet. As for those that do (Android/Windows), they don't offer the right script. Hope that helps.

[triangleman]

restalis, FYI you have been hellbanned, so no one can read your posts unless they are logged in and have "showdead" turned on.

[restalis]

I think it's because I've touched political matters in a post a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5166069