What direction does Arabic read?

Arabic reads Right-to-left (RTL).

What direction does Katakana read?

Katakana reads Left-to-right (LTR).

How many characters does Arabic have?

Arabic has 1,413 characters in Unicode.

How many characters does Katakana have?

Katakana has 321 characters in Unicode.

Arabic vs Katakana

Writing system comparison · ISO Arab vs ISO Kana

Arabic is a Living Right-to-left script from Middle Eastern (1,413 Unicode characters) used by 60 languages. Katakana is a Living Left-to-right script from East Asian (321 Unicode characters) used by 1 language. A key difference is reading direction: Arabic reads Right-to-left, while Katakana reads Left-to-right.

Arabic

مرحبا بالعالم

العربية

Katakana

コンニチハ

カタカナ

Side-by-Side Comparison

Attribute	Arabic	Katakana
ISO Code	Arab	Kana
Direction	Right-to-left	Left-to-right
Status	Living	Living
Region	Middle Eastern	East Asian
Characters	1,413	321
Languages	60	1
Script Type	Abjad	Syllabary
Descended From	Nabataean	Han (Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja)
Total Speakers	~291M	—
Introduced	400 CE	900 CE
Unicode Ranges	U+0600–U+06FF U+0750–U+077F U+0870–U+089F U+08A0–U+08FF U+FB50–U+FDFF U+FE70–U+FEFC U+10E60–U+10E7E U+10EC2–U+10EFF U+1EE00–U+1EEF1	U+30A1–U+30FF U+31F0–U+31FF U+32D0–U+32FE U+3300–U+3357 U+FF66–U+FF9D U+1AFF0–U+1AFFE U+1B000–U+1B000 U+1B120–U+1B122 U+1B155–U+1B167