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What 74 Years of Crossword History Says About the Language We Use
- kleiba 11y agoUber (a car service) is no longer clued as a German preposition (over or above) Perhaps because it isn't? The latter is written with an umlaut. (Note that umlauts can actually be a distinguishing factor for very different meanings, e.g., "schwül"->humid vs "schwul"->gay. In the case of "uber", there is simply no such word in the German language; the preposition is "über".) (Note also that in cases of typed German where there is not umlaut key available, the standard way to transcribe is to insert an "e" after the vowel. So you would write "ueber" for the German preposition.)
- tdjoe89 11y agoNew York Times crosswords use the 26 letters of the American alphabet. Accents and other letter modifications are stripped out of answers.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoThis is not strictly true, Thursday puzzles (and sometimes Sundays) often have boxes where you need to put in multiple letters, whole words, numbers, or other trickery.
- kleiba 11y agoHow would a word that contains the German s-ligature "ß" be written?
- viewer5 11y agoAre there actually any words like that that have made their way into English?
- conceit 11y agoyes, ueber became uber.
- viewer5 11y agoThat does have the 'ß' character in it, though, which is what I was asking about.
- schoen 11y agoOne possibility is the unit "gauss" (which, like the person, is Gauß in German). I was trying to figure out whether the spelling "Delikateßen" was ever standard (it would have been "-essen" even before the spelling reform, I think). I found some old books with a Google search that did use that form, but I don't know if it was ever standard or was a variant spelling.
- yorwba 11y agoWords in the category "English terms derived from German" on Wiktionary[1] that contain "ss" instead of "ß": ahlspiess, edelweiss, Federweisser, frass, Preussen, stoss, sussreserve, weissbier, weisswurst [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_derived_from_German https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_derive...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JoshTriplett 11y agoI've typically seen that transliterated as 'ss'. For instance, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss
- wolfgke 11y agoBy the new German spelling, "Schloss" is written with two s, since the o is short. In the old spelling, it was written "Schloß". On the other hand, for "Straße" the new spelling does not change the ß to ss, since the a is long. The best possible way to handle the ß is not transcribing it. In crossword puzzles it is transcribed as ss. In general, it is discussed whether one should rather transcribe ß as ss or sz (since ß is originally a sz ligature).
- asddubs 11y agono one transcribes ß as sz. It's always transcribed as ss
- wolfgke 11y agoThat is simply not correct. Indeed the ss transcription is much more common, but also the sz transcription is used: > https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F#Ersetzung_und_.C3.A4hnliche_Zeichen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F#Ersetzung_und_.C3.A4hnl... "Kann das Zeichen „ß“ nicht dargestellt werden, weil es in der verwendeten Schriftart oder dem Zeichensatz fehlt, so sollte es durch „ss“ ersetzt werden (aus „Straße“ wird „Strasse“). In den (behördlichen) Fernschreiben wurde das „ß“ bis in das frühe 21. Jahrhundert durch „sz“ ersetzt. Dies war unter anderem bei Familiennamen wichtig („Straßer“ wurde im Text zu „Straszer“)."
- asddubs 11y agoThat's talking in the past, though. Which doesn't invalidate what I said
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- abrowne 11y agoThere are standard ways to write German when only the basic Latin/English alphabet is available, so "ss" for ß. Umluts get a following e: "ae" for ä. See, for example, KDE dev Martin Gräßlin's domain: https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/about/ https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/about/
- wolfgke 11y agoGerman crosswords use the same 26 letters. But the points of umlauts are not simply dropped, but have to be transcribed: ä -> ae ö -> oe ü -> ue So simply dropping the points shows a clear lack of knowledge of German.
- wk_end 11y agoMost Americans do in fact lack knowledge of German.
- wolfgke 11y agoBut why are they so fond of German words, then? Edit: And why don't they look up the transliteration rules before? I mean: I only know few words of Esperanto, but I know the transliteration rules for the letters in the Esperanto alphabet that are not ASCII characters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography#ASCII_transliteration_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography#ASCII_tr...
- VLM 11y agoWe like their food, and we are never squeamish about culturally appropriating any tasty food or food terms or language in general. Everyone loves tacos, no matter their feelings on illegal immigration or whatever. Also see ancestry, there are 50M people of German ancestry in the USA, and only 80M people of Germany ancestry in Germany itself. We're a big enough fraction of the total that if we feel like changing language rules, we have enough people to make it stick, at least as a weird local dialect.
- wolfgke 11y agoChanging letters without first trying to understand why they are there in German (the same holds for my Esperanto example) simply shows that one is clearly not interested in the language/culture - in other words: An utter disrespect. On the other hand: Trying to understand, but simply failing is OK (yes, conjugating and declining words is quite ugly in German; even some Germans do it wrong). > We're a big enough fraction of the total that if we feel like changing language rules, we have enough people to make it stick, at least as a weird local dialect. To be able to challenge the language rules, you first have to understand them quite a bit. It is quite a difference between challenging language rules vs. simply not understanding them.
- conceit 11y agoGerman crosswords use the 26 letters, too, but write ueber.
- aethos 11y agoThat comparison and its respective graph seem a bit meaningless. Of course
- aethos 11y agoOf course the use of the German proposition as a hint has decreased -- I would think the clue "car service" is being used with greater frequency these days
- transpy 11y agoYes, not only meanings but also pronuntiation.
- konschubert 11y agoAlternatively: What 74 Years of Crossword History says about the New York Times. I am not dismissing the observation, but I think other factors have to be taken into account.
- mhurron 11y ago> I think other factors have to be taken into account. I would put forward what we consider an appropriate education as one of those factors.
- stinkytaco 11y agoOr what it says about the specific subset of words that are used in crossword puzzles. I find this article very interesting because it does outline some general trends in language usage (the migration in foreign language words, for example), but one could also draw the conclusion that Ulee's Gold is America's favorite movie from crosswords.
- donohoe 11y agoI wrote a mini NYT crossword search engine many years ago (only covers 1996 to 2011). http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/hacker http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/hacker Its funny to see how terms changed over the years. A few interesting ones: http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/aol http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/aol http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/google http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/google http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/facebook http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/facebook
- pgrote 11y agoVery cool site! A few I liked: http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/router http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/router http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/mci http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/mci http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/streaming http://donohoe.io/projects/crossword/#/streaming Thanks for sharing.
- personlurking 11y agoMaybe this already exists but I could see crosswords, etc (ex, Jeopardy-like A&Qs), being used as a learning tool for things like geography and history, allowing students to mentally visualize subject-specific associations (ie, including backwards and sideways) rather than just memorize first-this-then-that type facts. One could throw in identical problems here and there, either stated exactly the same way or differently, in order to create spaced-repition learning, as well as an inside-out understanding of the subject. To give a random example - US geography, and if the student enjoys it or does well, let them continue on with it and grade them on the successive tests for State-specific or foreign country geography, for example. Throw in historical changes to make it multidisciplinary. In other words, let students explore their interests within the larger subject, rather than standardizing everything for everyone. ______ The Crossword article and the article link that follows, on Horizontal History, inspired my comment. http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/01/horizontal-history.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/01/horizontal-history.html
- Panagrama 11y agoIt's heartening to hear you think it's a good idea, because I actually run a foreign languages learning site which uses bilingual crosswords for vocabulary memorization, and until now it has experienced an extremely lukewarm reception from teachers. Well, I had a hunch this kind of learning puzzles were a better fit for autodidacts anyway. If you care to check the site, its URL is http://panagrama.org http://panagrama.org Comments very much welcome! (And as this is HN, I should also mention that the crosswords are written in BiwaScheme.) EDIT: mistyped URL