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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suggest maybe it should just be a ligature, but that would make it hard to type English words like crossing and German sharp-S words in the same font.
And there are double-s words in German (like "Amtssicherheit", off the top of my head) that don't use a sharp S - it's not a ligature.
We had two extra letters, CH and LL that were just ligatures, so we dropped them and everyone is better off.
[1] http://www.rae.es/consultas/exclusion-de-ch-y-ll-del-abeceda...
And how do I type thiß capital sharp S? The Unicode input seems a little complicated :-/ CTRL + SHIFT + u1E9E = ẞ
Arguments against: ß is a ligature, one of ss. ffl is a ligature, but that doesn't mean FFL should have one too. Just get rid of it. Switzerland did and they're managing just fine. Capitalisation in Unicode for German locales is just a headache, and this really doesn't help. How would one enter it on a keyboard? Argument for: ss is pretty much the same shape as SS, and Dutch has ij and IJ. It's just an optional ruling, a…
> Capitalisation in Unicode for German locales is just a headache, and this really doesn't help.
Huh, if anything doesn't this make it easier? Replacing one code point (ß) with two (SS) when capitalizing seems like a bigger headache.
In German orthography, the grapheme ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt]) or scharfes S (IPA: [ˈʃaɐ̯.fəs ˈʔɛs], [ˈʃaː.fəs ˈʔɛs]), in English "sharp S", represents the [s] phoneme in Standard German, specifically when following long vowels and diphthongs, while ss is used after short vowels. The name Eszett represents the German pronunciation of the two letters S and Z.
It originates as the sz digraph as used in Old High German and Middle High German orthography, represented as a ligature of long s and tailed z in blackletter typography (ſʒ), which became conflated with the ligature for long s and round s (ſs) used in Roman type.
The grapheme has an intermediate position between letter and ligature. It behaves as a ligature in that it has no separate position in the alphabet. In alphabetical order it is treated as the equivalent of ⟨ss⟩ (not ⟨sz⟩). It also has no traditional capital form (although some type designers have introduced forms of "capital ß" de facto). It behaves like a letter in that its use is prescribed by orthographical rules and conveys phonological information (use of ß indicates that the preceding vowel is long).
Interestingly, this is the opposite as what happened in Spanish [1] We had two extra letters, CH and LL that were just ligatures, so we dropped them and everyone is better off. [1] http://www.rae.es/consultas/exclusion-de-ch-y-ll-del-abeceda...
Interestingly, this is the opposite as what happened in Spanish [1] We had two extra letters, CH and LL that were just ligatures, so we dropped them and everyone is better off. [1] http://www.rae.es/consultas/exclusion-de-ch-y-ll-del-abeceda...
Interestingly, this is the opposite as what happened in Spanish [1] We had two extra letters, CH and LL that were just ligatures, so we dropped them and everyone is better off. [1] http://www.rae.es/consultas/exclusion-de-ch-y-ll-del-abeceda...
Since the recent orthographic reforms, ßẞ means a very specific sound that’s separate from s, and from ss.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And there are double-s words in German (like "Amtssicherheit", off the top of my head) that don't use a sharp S - it's not a ligature.
It's actually a ligature for "sz" - at least it used to be. You probably won't find many german words that have an actual "sz" in them.