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Comment by RheingoldRiver | Hacker News Reader

As someone who reads fantasy fiction a lot, honestly I'd prefer if I read everything in American English. The biggest thing that gets me is e.g. "defence" instead of "defense" and other places where British English uses a 'c' instead of an 's'. It seriously diminishes the immersion for me, even if I've read probably 50+ books with the version I'm not used to by now.

It's never stopped me from reading a book before, but it does diminish my enjoyment quite a bit. For nonfiction, I don't care, I'm reading actively regardless. But when reading passively for enjoyment, it's noticeable and irritating.

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For fantaſy, eſpecially, I diſagree. When I'm in charge, the long-ſ will be mandatory in any ſtory involving magick, to better ſhew the hiſtorical baſis of the mythology (unleſs, of courſe, a ſkinwalker were to be involved, in which caſe American ſpellings are indeed preferred)

Фор бетер іммерсіон, ол тектс ін сторіес И ред шѵд бе урітен уіþ олд сирілік летерс, регардлес ов þе лангѵадж.

ᚳᚫᚾ᛫ᛁ᛫ᚫᛞᛞ᛫ᚫ᛫ᛒᛁᛏ᛫ᚩᚠ᛫ᚱᚢᚾᛖᛋ᛫ᛏᚩ᛫ᛏᚻᛖ᛫ᛗᛁᛉ?

פור טקסטס סט ין אנשיאנט טיימס, אונלי עברית וילל דו.

Incredible. I sent that to Google translate and it translated fairly well.

(For those who can't read it - the text is English transliterated into Hebrew script, not actually Hebrew. I'm impressed that Google managed to make sense of it)

> уіþ Was the thorn really a part of old Cyrillic? Would make some sense given the shared history, but still.

> И I struggled for a bit with this one, but I don't know of a better way to represent it other then "ai" in Cyrillic I guess.

The "ѵ" is interesting too, never seen that before since you can make do with the sorta B-looking letter instead.

There're several mistakes:

- instead þ could be used ѳ;

- с in тектс is missed, it should be текстс or better теѯтс;

- ѵ is basically Greek upsilon which appeared in English mostly as u [auto] or y [system], therefore шѵд would be better written as шоѵд where /oѵ/ in old Cyrillic pronounsed as /u/ as in Greek, or just шꙋд;

- дж in лангѵадж could be writtend as џ;

And so on.

Thanks, these are good. I took inspiration from this horrible PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14YgpdJ-k5M-GiwRDblvnEtsFvok...

> Was the thorn really a part of old Cyrillic?

No, never was a thing. Early Cyrillic had a bunch of unique letters that are long gone, but it never had "þ" in there.

> The "ѵ" is interesting too

It's from Greek "Y" (upsilon) and it - depending on the place - could've meant either /i/ or /v/ sound (and /u/ when in "оѵ" digraph, so parent comment has it wrong): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izhitsa

I think you’re on to something

𐡅𐡉 𐡍𐡕 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡊

I have to say that the long-s looks quite horrible in Verdana, and probably most other sans-serif font. That makes sense, since most Sans Serif typefaces significantly postdate the abandonment of the long-s.

If you want to see how it should look in context, here's a typical 17th century example: https://www.raptisrarebooks.com/images/86066/paradise-lost-a...

The prints from the 18th century are even nicer with better quality and consistency in general. The Caslon typefaces are pretty exemplary here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/A_Specim...

Roman typefaces with a long-s are a very 17th-18th century thing. A blackletter (gothic) typeface gets you closer, but all of that is still not very much medieval. What you really want is a meticulously manuscript in Carolingian Miniscule[1] or Uncial script[2], complete with killer rabbits[3] and knights fighting snails[4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncial_script

[3] https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2021/06/killer-rabb...

[4] https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/09/knight-v-sn...

Sadly I still read the s as f so I keep got stumped. "fantafy?"

Reminds me of a Just William story where he copied a letter from a letter-writing guide book, studiously converting all the "f"s into "s"s.

I read someone saying that reading text with the long s is like hearing someone speak with a lisp, and that is SO true. I love it.

> seriously diminishes the immersion for me

Upvoting because this is seriously interesting. I can see old or Tolkien English being a hurdle, so I relate to what you’re saying. But small changes in diction tend to draw me into the world, by othering it from the familiar.

I think it might be partially because I've done & currently do some copyediting work. So I'm pretty trained to see any grammar or spelling mistake. To be clear, it's not the difference in language that bothers me, just words that are spelled differently from American English. I literally can't not see them.

...what? Why would this make a difference?

I've found this jarring only in one case: the dub of Mary and the Witch's Flower, where the setting was an emphatically English-style public school, the lead character's VA had (or was using) a strong Home Counties accent, but the lines were full of US-only terms like "Somophore". It just felt horribly fake (even in a fantasy story!) because you'd never see those things together in real life.

> but the lines were full of US-only terms like "Somophore"

“Sophomore”, maybe?

Oh probably, I don't really speak American and it was a while ago.

Somophore is the same thing but they carry flags with them everywhere.

A differense, please, GP's reading.

For me, it's reading words like 'centre' and 'colour' or 'practise' because I can't help but read them as 'sen-trey', 'col-ore' and 'prac-tize'

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