Arabic and Hebrew Speakers Can Both Read This Script

WNYC News | May 30, 2017

Here's a mind trick: if you erase the bottom half of an English sentence, your brain is still able to understand the words.

Weird, right?

A typeface designer in Israel knew about this trick and decided to test it out on Hebrew and Arabic. Liron Lavi Turkenich found that Arabic works the same way as English - you can read it based on the top half of the characters alone. And Hebrew is opposite - you can read it based on the bottom halves.

So Turkenich decided to marry the scripts and create a new writing system that can be read by Arabic and/or Hebrew speakers. And the result is a visually stunning language that speaks to the persistent (and at times, contentious) coexistence of these two languages in Israel.

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