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The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

typography.guru

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Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#21

Post by faho »

bla2 wrote: post #6
faho wrote: post #5

As a german, I see this as a step in the wrong direction. The sharp S is a PITA to begin with, so I'd rather abolish it completely. Now there's a whole bunch of complications coming from this - how do I type this? To type lowercase "ß", I press the key above "p" (in the same position as with qwerty) and "ü" (to the right of it), which will do "?" when pressed together with shift. So do we move "?" somewhere else? QWE…

As a German, I disagree with you. German's not English, even though you might prefer if it was. Others don't. It's fine that it uses the letters it ended up with historically. This change fixes an internal inconsistency, your reply seems fairly irrelevant. It feels like replying to some bugfix in, say, Ruby with something like "I never liked Ruby anyhow".

>This change fixes an internal inconsistency

I agree that it does! "ß" turning into "SS" when uppercasing is awful.

>It feels like replying to some bugfix in, say, Ruby with something like "I never liked Ruby anyhow".

In this analogy, "Ruby" would be the German language. And in that case... yes, I can disagree with a bugfix if it makes matters more complicated! I can argue that something is a misfeature, like ß is. Removing it would improve the situation, especially from a technological viewpoint.

>German's not English, even though you might prefer if it was

That's kind of a low blow. "ß" is not a defining feature of the German language.

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#22

Post by yellowapple »

JepZ wrote: post #8

And how do I type thiß capital sharp S? The Unicode input seems a little complicated :-/ CTRL + SHIFT + u1E9E = ẞ

On a Unix-like system with X11 and a compose key, I believe Compose + S + S should work (away from my computer, so can't test).

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#23

Post by raverbashing »

quink wrote: post #4

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…

Actually it's a ligature of SZ (as even it name says, eszet)

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#24

Post by filmor »

zzleeper wrote: post #12

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...

As other's have written already, ß is not simply a ligature. Since the orthography reform in the nineties it universally indicates that the preceding vowel is lengthened, dropping it would lead to a large amount of homophones. An example is Maße (measures) vs Masse (mass).

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#25

Post by robert-boehnke »

cbmueller wrote: post #11
Vivtek wrote: post #9

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.

It's more apparent if you look at the long s (ſ) which has since fallen out of favour.

If you squint and your font permitting, ſz should look more like ß.

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#27

Post by kuschku »

raverbashing wrote: post #23
quink wrote: post #4

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…

Actually it's a ligature of SZ (as even it name says, eszet)

And it has a separate, and distinct sound from s or sz, and has a separate meaning for the pronunciation of the surrounding letters than ss.

For example, Maße and Masse are only possible to differentiate due to ß.

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#28

Post by 1maginary »

zzleeper wrote: post #12

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...

>La eliminación de los dígrafos ch y ll del inventario de letras del abecedario no supone, en modo alguno, que desaparezcan del sistema gráfico del español.

Important distinction to make. They are still part of written Spanish. To be completely honest I didn't even know they were part of the alphabet before and I wouldn't know how that affects everyday life.

The capital Eszett is a new letter that (almost literally) no one used before

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#29

Post by tptacek »

bla2 wrote: post #6
faho wrote: post #5

As a german, I see this as a step in the wrong direction. The sharp S is a PITA to begin with, so I'd rather abolish it completely. Now there's a whole bunch of complications coming from this - how do I type this? To type lowercase "ß", I press the key above "p" (in the same position as with qwerty) and "ü" (to the right of it), which will do "?" when pressed together with shift. So do we move "?" somewhere else? QWE…

As a German, I disagree with you. German's not English, even though you might prefer if it was. Others don't. It's fine that it uses the letters it ended up with historically. This change fixes an internal inconsistency, your reply seems fairly irrelevant. It feels like replying to some bugfix in, say, Ruby with something like "I never liked Ruby anyhow".

How is using "ss" instead of ß in German any worse from using "th" instead of þ in English?

Re: The capital sharp S in now part of the official German orthography

#30

Post by rb2k_ »

cbmueller wrote: post #11
Vivtek wrote: post #9

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.

There are tons according to http://www.wordmine.info/Search.aspx?slang=de&stype=words-wi...

FRAKTIONSZWANG FREIHANDELSZONE KONFISZIEREN [...]

A lot of them are combined, but still quite a few 'regular' ones

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