4 ms·
Only sz should use ß. Ss stays ss even in German-german. Switzerland got rid of the sz/ss distinction a long time ago. So you need to be culture and word aware
by bbu 4y ago
Only sz should use ß. Ss stays ss even in German-german. Switzerland got rid of the sz/ss distinction a long time ago.
So you need to be culture and word aware to do it „right“.
- korlja 4y ago'sz' for 'ß' is sometimes used to make things roundtrip-proof in capslock, e.g. on military stencils. HTML calls it 'szlig'. Also, some use "Esszet" as the name of the character. But all are wrong in that ß isn't a ligature of s and z, it is a ligature of s and s. The shape of the character stems from the fact that in fractur writing and even some grotesk fonts, 's' at the end of a word was written 's', while 's' within a word was written 'ſ'. Thus the end of a word like Fuss was written Fuſs, giving a ligature of Fuß. No 'z' anywhere.
- mzs 4y agoI always thought that German z used to look something between Ꙁ & з. ʒ looks pretty close so ſз became ß but Latin transliteration rules were ss instead. At least that's what I was taught in German class.
- kmm 4y agoOriginally ß arose as a ligature of s and z, or rather ſ and ʒ. In many older texts, or even current fonts, the second part of the ligature is indisputably a long-tailed ʒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F
- seszett 4y ago> some use "Esszet" as the name of the character I believe the actual name is Eszett.
- wanderingstan 4y agoOnly “wrong” in light of current usage, but not historically. By this measure, the English name of “W” would be wrong because it’s not actually a “double-U” but a “double-V”. But at the time of the letter’s formation, U and V were not yet separate letters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W
- jfk13 4y agoThe Swedes get this "right", and call it [ˈdɵ̂bːɛlˌveː]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet
- wanderingstan 4y agoOh wow, didn’t know that!
- samatman 4y agoFrench as well, although the elegance gained is quickly tarnished by calling y "Greek i".
- kaetemi 4y agoIn Dutch it's even more sane, the alphabet just goes V = vee, W = wee.