Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It feels unbelievable that in Europe literacy rate could be 10% of lower. Then I look at documents even as young as 150 years... fraktur, blackletter, elaborate handwritting. I guess I'm illiterate now.

Hopefully next generations will feel the same about legal contracts, law in general, and Java code bases. They're incomprehensible not because of fonts but because of unfathomable complexity.



Which Europe and which century do you live in where literacy rate is below 10%?


Speaking about the past centuries.


You can learn fraktur or blackletter in a day and cyrillic in a few days, if you already know the latin alphabet.


> learn fraktur or blackletter in a day and cyrillic in a few days

Not a chance, sorry.


Why? The former are just different typefaces (I learned to read them by myself when I was 10 while looking at our old books) and the latter I sort of picked up while travelling through Serbia and Bulgaria (I don't speak the languages).




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: