What direction does Arabic read?

Arabic reads Right-to-left (RTL).

What direction does Latin read?

Latin reads Left-to-right (LTR).

How many characters does Arabic have?

Arabic has 1,413 characters in Unicode.

How many characters does Latin have?

Latin has 1,492 characters in Unicode.

Arabic vs Latin

Writing system comparison · ISO Arab vs ISO Latn

Arabic is a Living Right-to-left script from Middle Eastern (1,413 Unicode characters) used by 60 languages. Latin is a Living Left-to-right script from European (1,492 Unicode characters) used by 515 languages. A key difference is reading direction: Arabic reads Right-to-left, while Latin reads Left-to-right. 7 languages are written in both scripts.

Arabic

مرحبا بالعالم

العربية

Latin

Hello World

Side-by-Side Comparison

Attribute	Arabic	Latin
ISO Code	Arab	Latn
Direction	Right-to-left	Left-to-right
Status	Living	Living
Region	Middle Eastern	European
Characters	1,413	1,492
Languages	60	515
Script Type	Abjad	Alphabet
Descended From	Nabataean	Old Italic (Etruscan, Oscan, etc.)
Total Speakers	~291M	~2.2B
Introduced	400 CE	700 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+0041–U+007A U+00AA–U+00F6 U+00F8–U+01BA U+01BB–U+01C3 U+01C4–U+0293 U+0294–U+02AF U+02B0–U+02E4 U+1D00–U+1D77 U+1D79–U+1D9A U+1D9B–U+1DBE U+1E00–U+1EFF U+2071–U+209C U+212A–U+214E U+2160–U+2188 U+2C60–U+2C7F U+A722–U+A7FF U+AB30–U+AB69 U+FB00–U+FB06 U+FF21–U+FF5A U+10780–U+107BA U+1DF00–U+1DF2A