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Long S

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Re: Long S

#11

Post by teilo »

eru wrote: post #8
caf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is a living language, you can always try and revive it. It might give your resume a certain je ne sais qua ;)

Actually, my `we' meant the Germans. And not so much only the long-s, but also Fraktur. The Nazis banned Fraktur, probably because Hitler didn't like it, and we never re-introduced it. As an irony of history, for some people Fraktur now carries connotations of the Third Reich. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute ) I have a few old books in Fraktur. Faust and translations of Shakespeare's plays.…

I have a large number of old books in Fraktur (mostly Lutheran theology). I read so much more German in Fraktur that I find it easier to follow than the Latin script. It always amazes me that there are a good number of Germans who cannot read it at all. My wife (who also is well-versed in Fraktur, as well as the old German "saw-tooth" cursive) has had a number of German-speakers ask her to transcribe Fraktur to modern script. I mean, sure, it's different. Some of the capitals are especially strange, and there are a few more ligatures, but it's not that hard.

Re: Long S

#12

Post by mc32 »

caf wrote: post #4
eru wrote: post #2

Too bad we gave up on that.

English is a living language, you can always try and revive it. It might give your resume a certain je ne sais qua ;)

When I chat, occasionally, I'll þrow in a þorn, or, depending if it's voiced, ðen I'll use ðe eð [eth]. Most people just pretend it was an artifact in ðe session.

Re: Long S

#14

Post by mahmud »

szany wrote: post #3

"The long s survives in elongated form, and with an italic-style curled descender, as the integral symbol ∫ used in calculus." Did not know that.

Always remind myself that the (Reimann) integral is generally a sum: sum of the areas of all the rectangles under the curve. It becomes more accurate as their bases shrink (as x becomes smaller, and the rectangles become thinner. They eventually become almost lines, completely saturating area under the curve.)

The limit of their diminishing IS the Reimann integral. So it makes sense to use 'S' for sum.

Big-Sigma (∑) is used for summation in general, and Big-pie (∏) for products.

Re: Long S

#16

Post by coldarchon »

teilo wrote: post #11
eru wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, my `we' meant the Germans. And not so much only the long-s, but also Fraktur. The Nazis banned Fraktur, probably because Hitler didn't like it, and we never re-introduced it. As an irony of history, for some people Fraktur now carries connotations of the Third Reich. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute ) I have a few old books in Fraktur. Faust and translations of Shakespeare's plays.…

I have a large number of old books in Fraktur (mostly Lutheran theology). I read so much more German in Fraktur that I find it easier to follow than the Latin script. It always amazes me that there are a good number of Germans who cannot read it at all. My wife (who also is well-versed in Fraktur, as well as the old German "saw-tooth" cursive) has had a number of German-speakers ask her to transcribe Fraktur to moder…

Ever watched both parts of "Die Nibelungen Saga" silent movie version from 1924 by Fritz Lang? After 4.5 hours reading these old letters you will hate them ..

Re: Long S

#18

Post by edge17 »

Interestingly, google's book indexing project shows that the word 'fuck' used to be a much more popular word back in the day than it is now - http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fuck&year_s...

I read some place it's because google's character recognition automation interprets the long S as an 'f' instead of an 's'

Re: Long S

#19

Post by derleth »

Xuzz wrote: post #9

I think the most amazing part of this is just how quickly it disappeared. That graph showing it almost entirely disappearing — after being used for hundreds of years beforehand — in just 15 years is pretty amazing. The explanations in this article, sadly, aren't that in-depth about why we see such a big switch so quickly...

It's almost a perfect logistic curve:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

Re: Long S

#20

Post by robertk »

teilo wrote: post #11
eru wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, my `we' meant the Germans. And not so much only the long-s, but also Fraktur. The Nazis banned Fraktur, probably because Hitler didn't like it, and we never re-introduced it. As an irony of history, for some people Fraktur now carries connotations of the Third Reich. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua-Fraktur_dispute ) I have a few old books in Fraktur. Faust and translations of Shakespeare's plays.…

I have a large number of old books in Fraktur (mostly Lutheran theology). I read so much more German in Fraktur that I find it easier to follow than the Latin script. It always amazes me that there are a good number of Germans who cannot read it at all. My wife (who also is well-versed in Fraktur, as well as the old German "saw-tooth" cursive) has had a number of German-speakers ask her to transcribe Fraktur to moder…

Hey, we number theorists still use fraktur all the time! Prime ideals in Dedekind domains are usually denoted with fraktur letters.
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