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How is using "ss" instead of ß in German any worse from using "th" instead of þ in English?
Take the words Maße (measurements, sizes) and Masse (weight, mass). There’s hundreds more of such examples. ß and ss have a different effect on surrounding letters (the a in Maße is short, the one in Masse is long)
Otherwise I totally agree, ß is important to distinguish phonetics.
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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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is using "ss" instead of ß in German any worse from using "th" instead of þ in English?
Take the words Maße (measurements, sizes) and Masse (weight, mass). There’s hundreds more of such examples. ß and ss have a different effect on surrounding letters (the a in Maße is short, the one in Masse is long)
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…
It started out as a ligature of ſ and ʒ, forms of s and z that don't exist anymore today in German. And it became a letter like æ did. Also this happened at a time where z was pronounced differently from how it is pronounced today.
I know that, but again prescriptive linguistics vs. descriptive and descriptive definitely says ss.
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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. R…
It is though. As a language-lover and German-learner, AFAIK, no other language uses this letter. "ß", along with less exclusive "ä", "ö", and "ü" are what distinguishes German orthography from other languages.
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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?
> The change doesn’t mean that everyone now has to use a Capital Sharp S. The previous spelling of replacing ß with SS in uppercase texts remains the default for the time being.
The Council for German Orthography sanctioned the use of the uppercase ß. They just accepted the fact that it exits and is used. No more, no less.
That being said, I find it a bit ironic that at first Unicode had to bend over backwards to allow the strange surjective mapping that only German requires, only to later resolve to problem the easy way with the introduction of a new character. I mean it's probably the right thing to do, because both things are used in German, but on the other hand it introduces a lot of complications just for one very specific special case.