The long S still survives in German as half of a ligature with the letter Z - as the German letter called eszett or scharfes S (ẞß). As for its use, the Greek script still keeps around three forms of its equivalent for S - sigma (Σσς). The form σ is used everywhere except for at the end of a word, where the form ς is used.
I see stuff like this and just wonder what it would be like to go back in time and tell people: "In the not too distant future, everyone will pronounce that character like an F and these publications you're making will totally confuse and disorient even skilled English speakers" just to see them laugh me out of the room. 😆
I didn’t think that there would be a video on this. This video is so random lol. I was at the library and our particular library has a special section with a vault for older books and I was reading Shakespeare from a book from 500 years ago. I noticed that every word with an “F” only made sense if I just imagined it was an “S” because in real life it actually really looks like an “F”. So when I got home I looked it up and I found this video. Thank you for this video. It helped me understand
I uſe þe long ſ all þe time, along wiþ þe Old Engliſh letter Þ. Long S formerly ſerved to diſtinguiſh words by þeir varied ſhape. I baſe my orþography ſomewhat off þe Wycliffe Bible.
Fascinating! So was the "long S" NEVER used at the end of words? It seems like, in cursive handwriting, it would fit very well in that position, because of its flourished nature.
Looking at some of the archival documents produced by the chancellors of the Republic of Ragusa (now purely known by its Croatian name Dubrovnik) in Latin, some people at least used it at the end, but it was never widespread. Even in the Ragusan documents, I only remember seeing it in the Latin ones.
I agree, and we might as well bring back þe letter Þ too. But I'd perſonally advocate for only uſing long s initially and medially and not at þe end of words.
Yes. "This" would be written with the round s, not the long ſ. And double ſs at the end of a word would be ß with the ligature, like in German (well - before the reform of the 1990s)
I adore the long s! I try to uſe it as much as poſſible, though it can be a hindrance it times: for one thing whenever I want to write ſomething digitally with it I have to paſte them in individually (does anyone know a keyboard on ASUS Chromebooks that lets you type them in?); for another regarding writing digitally, it's hard to get a good font that iſn't juſt the ſhape ſhewn here, but alſo with the little notch to the left midway up; and thirdly, I've been having terrible trouble writing them by hand, I uſually juſt do it as a curſive _f_ but without the loops -- does anyone know a better way to write it by hand?
I thought it was called the round s, not the "short s". The round s was also used at the end of syllables or compound elements. For example, misſpell or disſatiſfy.
