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Not only the romanization, also the capital form in German is SS. The ß sticks around in German because it prevents some ambiguities. For example Busse and Buß
by canjobear 2y ago
Not only the romanization, also the capital form in German is SS.
The ß sticks around in German because it prevents some ambiguities. For example Busse and Buße are different words with different pronunciations.
Basically German orthography backed itself into a corner because of two rules: a vowel before a doubled consonant is short, and an s before a vowel is pronounced /z/. This leaves you with no clear way to write a long vowel followed by an /s/ sound followed by a vowel: VssV would make the first vowel short, and VsV would keep the first vowel long but the consonant would be pronounced as /z/. The ß solves this problem.
- NeoTar 2y ago> The ß sticks around in German Some German. I believe it’s basically abandoned in Swiss German.
- wongarsu 2y agosz is officially still an accepted substitution for ß though. It's basically never used, except if you capitalize a word with ß and substituting ss would lead to confusion (if both words exist and would make sense). Of course since 2017 the upper case ẞ is also an option, but nobody wants to use that either.
- user_of_the_wek 2y ago> Not only the romanization, also the capital form in German is SS. Just for completeness, there _is_ a capital ß: ẞ
- hanche 2y agoThat is a fairly modern invention, though. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F