Do any languages have words for left & right that start with the same letter?
Do any languages have words for left & right that start with the same letter?
And if so, how do they label headphones, contact lenses etc?
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I didn't have to scroll too far in Google translate to find that Arabic for left and right is yasir and yamin (in the Latin alphabet, it's يسار يمين in Arabic which seems to start with different characters anyway) but my guess is that things would be labeled with S and M.
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which seems to start with different characters anyway
Remember that Arabic is right-to-left—both words start with ي (yeh).
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which seems to start with different characters anyway
It doesn't - Arabic is written right-to-left, both words start with ⟨ي⟩ (it looks like ⟨ﻳ⟩ there).
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It's yasar and yamin and yes, they both start with the same letter but alternatively you can use chamal ( north) for left. It's archaic and rarely if ever used in modern days but it fix this problem that isn't one in the first place because you can print the whole word since their shape alone allow for an easy and fast identification, use the left right symbols with a tilted tail or just use L&R for arabic nations with English as the main foreign language and G&D for the ones where it's french.
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Levantine Arabic says shamal شمال but that's might be too slangy for labelling.
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Only Levantine? Al Qur'an seems to prefer شمال for left so I thought that's what will be in MSA. I have never heard يسار for left before.
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I don't know, to be honest - I'm no expert, I just learnt some Arabic whilst living in Jordan.
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53 comments