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I always thought of it as a ligature for "et" (like ffi is a ligature for ffi) rather than a letter. But I suppose the sz ligature (ß) eventually became a letter,
by dunham 3y ago
I always thought of it as a ligature for "et" (like ffi is a ligature for ffi) rather than a letter. But I suppose the sz ligature (ß) eventually became a letter, so there is precedent.
- dragonwriter 3y agoæ (æsc/ash) was a letter in English, too, but, like &, stopped being one even though it continued to be used (as a ligature).
- mbg721 3y agoSpanish also treats multiple-letters as letters in their own right, doesn't it? And Dutch with ij.
- thenewwazoo 3y agoNot really, depending on who you ask. In the 90s, the RAE declared that ‘ll’ and ‘ch’ were no longer letters, but they’re still taught as letters in many places. ‘rr’ was never a letter in its own right, but many people consider it to be, as a kind of parallel to ‘ll’ and ‘ch’.
- mbg721 3y agoThat's good info to learn beyond the strips of letters at the tops of classrooms, thanks!
- tmtvl 3y agoTreating ij as a single letter in Dutch makes no sense, unless one also treats au, ei*, eu, ou, and ui as single letters. And possibly sch as well. * especially ei as it's the same sound: eis (demand) and ijs (ice) are homonyms.
- sp332 3y agoß is a ligature for ss, right? ſs
- dunham 3y agoIt's called es-zett (S Z), and I believe it originally was a joined long s and a z, like ſ𝔷. (There doesn't appear to be a fraktur long s in unicode, but I include the fraktur z to show where the shape comes from.) I believe these days it is typically written as "ss" when the ß character is not available. Edit: The name points to sz, but it's possible that it replaced both ss and sz. I'm not an expert.
- lolinder 3y agoThe difference is that ß is actually used to spell words. & has never been used as part of a word, it only ever st&s alone.