I just thought about this now, but any alternate history that explores tech in the Middle-Ages would count as medieval sci-fi. For example, the Eastern Romans building on the ancient Greek technologies and experiments and using Greek fire, concentrated mirror beams, calculators and steam engines.

I found this universe that might be medieval scif-fi:

Dragonriders of Pern

The books follow a series of Allomancers, who are individuals who can consume metal to wield magical powers.

Doesn’t seem scientific.

I just realized now that “Dubya” means W.

And now I understand why that US president is given that strange nickname.

The Chinese invented the Chinese ideograms.

The script-less Japanese adopted them, but they didn’t fit their language well on their own. So, they created hiragana (a syllabary) to be able to properly write their own language. A Japanese sentence typically comprises Chinese ideograms and hiragana.

Later, both the People’s Republic of China and Japan simplified their ideograms, but not in the same way, and the Chinese went much further.

So, now, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao use the traditional hanzi.

Japan uses their kanji, somewhat simplified.

And the PRC, Malaysia and Singapore use the simplified hanzi.

South Korea uses hanja which is virtually the same as traditional hanzi. And North Korea completely abandonned the Chinese ideograms.

In Chinese, they’re “hanzi”.

Or you can just say “Chinese ideograms”

There are many false friends between French and English. Off the top of my head:

• EN: eventually (FR: un jour)
• FR: éventuellement (EN: possibly)

• EN: actually (FR: en fait)
• FR: actuellement (EN: currently)

“Enregistrer” in French both means to record or register something and to save a file, but you can’t use the English word “register” for both.

“Défense” in French both means defense and prohibited, but you can’t use the English “defense” for both.