YUROP

even in the colored areas

...of the cards, I eventually understood.

In Spain every single playing card company has its own design (even if they are all swords, sticks, coins and cups), probably more than one. I don't think I've ever seen the same design twice, every house I go to has different cards.

Funny enough, in Portuguese, the names for the sets are ~~dirty~~ direct translations of the Spanish versions, but applied to the French icons. It didn’t make much sense to me calling a losange “golds”, or a heart “cups”, a leaf “swords”, and a clover leaf “sticks”.

Edit: autocorrupt

You do realize that that "club" is a gherkin, right? :)

Fwiw, I like all the properly illustrated variants so much better than the French variant that always feels lifeless to me.

Do they have ultra-stylized versions too?

The French symbols are either pure black or pure red, they're symmetrical, and they're fairly abstract. The "diamond" is just a rhombus. The Spade and Club are fairly abstract shapes that don't look like anything in particular.

In the image, all the other versions are multicolored, and still seem to represent real-world objects. But, I'm curious if there are "modern" decks where say the coin (oro) is just a circle, or the club is just a long thin rectangle, or something.

Feel free to join [email protected] for a Spanish speaking community!

Not sure if it is the same as Mexico, but the “oros bastos” set doesn’t have cards 8,9,10 but jump from 7 to sota (fancy lad or something like that), caballo (horse) and Rey (king).

This is similar to the set I was used to: https://www.casino.es/imagenes/juegos/mus/baraja-espanola.jpg

Because of that we use different sets for different games.

Edit: the aces always had very cool designs, with the gold ace having the card brand on display.

The German suite is most common in east Germany. west Germans use the french deck, or if they're playing German card games they use the tournament German deck (which is just the french deck with different colours)

You should have asked for bavarian cards/ bayrische Karten and they would have probably known. They are not widely used in the north though.

The standard cards are everywhere, but the German variant is still used, at least in bavaria. Just talk with some grandpas in the village restaurants and they will gleefully get their cards out.

In Austria we're almost always (= for everything except poker) using "doppeldeutsche" (double German) cards.

Reading more about it, it seems like these are the original Latin suits, and the French tried to, and succeeded, in replacing them.

But "sticks" and "swords" are inverted, at least in this table.

Suit evolution is quite an interesting topic. The first known card decks were usually made of several hundreds of cards and were not standardized, some didn't even have suits. Symbols, images and shapes varied greatly as they were usually hand painted. This European suits are offshoots of Islamic suits. Most likely, each of these suit styles was an attempt to standardize some game or production at different historical points in time and through the interpretation by entirely different artists. The common theory for French abstraction is that they are much simpler symbols which are faster and easier to reproduce in large quantities. Particularly easy to engrave on the first woodwork prints for mass production.

I have no idea, but it looks like they would be much easier to paint with brushes. Or maybe it's to simplify printing with a press; simple shapes, one color each. Just wondering aloud.

I mean, up until the '50s they didn't even speak the same language... every region had their own language (Italians call them "dialect", but they're in fact different langauges). Then television came and unified the language (standard Italian is just the dialect of Tuscany).

Italy is a very young country. Sure, the Ancient Romans unified the whole Europe, but Italy has only became a nation in 1861. Pretty young country if you ask me.

Or is tarot using Spanish suits?

In latin America spanish style cards are often used, and you might find some southern italian designs with italian-americans. But for the most part the rest of the world uses the standard “french” suits.

Also, nowadays if you ask for a deck of cards in most of the other places, you’re still likely to get a french-suited deck. Usually the american style (think of your typical bycicle brand card deck).

When I tried to buy a dutch style deck here in the Netherlands they didn't even have it at my local board game store! I had to order them online.

Found this website that should answer your question: https://www.wopc.co.uk/explore/suits