alt Hacker NewsSurprisingly, some languages are better read in more specific fonts.
Maybe it's just a matter of familiarity, but I think it's more than that.
Reading hs.fi in their font of choice in Finnish is just fine, but auto-translated to English (in the same font) feels oh so wrong!
P.S.
Reading hacker news in English in HN font of choice is just fine, while the same sentence translated to Finnish (still in HN font) is mostly OK, but a little worse.
My very uneducated opinion is that doubled consonants and vowels are very common in Finnish, and those are better read with more aggressive kerning, something that HN sanf serif doesn't do.
Example: - lattia on laavaa tallilla - floor is lava in a garage
Is there a general preference for serifs, or a local style in Finland for this reason?
German certainly has typographic preferences that err toward taller x-heights and narrower forms due to heavy use of portmanteaus. It’d be interesting to know of other language-specific typographic styles too.