What direction does Arabic read?

Arabic reads Right-to-left (RTL).

What direction does Tamil read?

Tamil reads Left-to-right (LTR).

How many characters does Arabic have?

Arabic has 1,413 characters in Unicode.

How many characters does Tamil have?

Tamil has 123 characters in Unicode.

Arabic vs Tamil

Writing system comparison · ISO Arab vs ISO Taml

Arabic is a Living Right-to-left script from Middle Eastern (1,413 Unicode characters) used by 60 languages. Tamil is a Living Left-to-right script from South Asian (123 Unicode characters) used by 2 languages. A key difference is reading direction: Arabic reads Right-to-left, while Tamil reads Left-to-right.

Arabic

مرحبا بالعالم

العربية

Tamil

வணக்கம்

தமிழ் எழுத்து

Side-by-Side Comparison

Attribute	Arabic	Tamil
ISO Code	Arab	Taml
Direction	Right-to-left	Left-to-right
Status	Living	Living
Region	Middle Eastern	South Asian
Characters	1,413	123
Languages	60	2
Script Type	Abjad	Abugida
Descended From	Nabataean	Brahmi
Total Speakers	~291M	~78M
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+0B82–U+0BFA U+11FC0–U+11FFF