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New York Times crosswords use the 26 letters of the American alphabet. Accents and other letter modifications are stripped out of answers.
by tdjoe89 11y ago
New 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.