QuilotoaHow far back in time can you understand English? This site goes back by centuries allowing you to test yourself.
This was fun! Anyone know about the ſ character? How come in the 1600s it only sometimes seemed to take the place of s?
It’s purely stylistic, but here are the rules - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s#Rules
It looks almost like the old german “S”.
5ibelius9insterbergSome of the rules for the use of the long s from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
Long s was always used (ſong, ſubſtitute), except:
- Upper-case letters are always the round S; there is no upper-case long s.
- A round s was always used at the end of a word ending with ⟨s⟩: his, complains, ſucceſs
- However, long s was maintained in abbreviations such as ſ. for ſubſtantive(substantive), and Geneſ. for Geneſis(Genesis).
- Before an apostrophe (indicating an omitted letter), a round s was used: us’d and clos’d.
- Before or after an f, a round s was used: offset, ſatisfaction.
It was often used for “f” as well, specifically in print to save money.
Towards the end of the article, they explain the same thing was done with using “y” to replace the letters that make the “th” sound (ð and þ) so instead of “the” or “ðe” you got “ye”