181–190 of 377 posts
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English seems to manage okay with no 'special' latin characters.
What a coincidence that English manages fine with just the letters in ASCII. Seriously though, what definition of "special Latin characters" are you using? Italian does just fine with fewer...
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That’s actually the worst thing you can do. That actually violates the relevant DIN standards for transcription. You have to replace Ä with AE, Ö with OE, Ü with UE. You won’t find a person named Müller under Muller in any database, especially not digital databases. For electronic forms, always use äöüß, or, if the system happens to be an American one (the only form I’ve ever had to fill where I couldn’t use äöüß was…
Do people outside Germany even care about DIN standards?
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Annoyingly, English uses "th" for two rather different phonemes: þ ("thing") and ð ("this"). Icelandic maintains this useful distinction. I feel like English spelling would need at least half a dozen more letters to disambiguate. As it is, English is actually a not great choice for a global language because it's so unphonetic.
> As it is, English is actually a not great choice for a global language because it's so unphonetic. English would be a more-useful global language — in that it'd be easier for non-native speakers to learn and use it — if we pedants who secretly look down on anything less than "proper" spelling and grammar (and I'm embarrassed to be one of them) would get over ourselves and accept simpler, easier forms as they natura…
Before reaching that level, however, they have to deal with truly maddening stuff like how to pronounce word like "read" or "tear" or "close", or why it's "an interesting little book" instead of "a little interesting book", or why you can see a movie but you're not "seeing TV", or the fact that both "thir-tee" and "thir-dee" mean 30.
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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.
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.
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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
Here is the full list of non compounded words containing an "sz". Abszeß - Adoleszenz - Disziplin - Eszett - Faszie - Faszination - Fluoreszenz - Koaleszenz - Konfiszierung - lasziv - Lumineszenz - Obszönität - omniszient - Oszillation - phosphoresziere - Plebiszit - Proszenium - Rekognoszierung - Rekonvaleszent - Szene - viszeral Most of these actually are of latin origin. My favorite is obviously "Abszeß" - probabl…
Nowadays it's written Abszess as the e is short.
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…
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It is important but you are marking the wrong thing, you could make it Māsse and Masse if you really cared.
Or Maesse, which is closer to what it sounds like anyway.
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How is using "ss" instead of ß in German any worse from using "th" instead of þ in English?
Annoyingly, English uses "th" for two rather different phonemes: þ ("thing") and ð ("this"). Icelandic maintains this useful distinction. I feel like English spelling would need at least half a dozen more letters to disambiguate. As it is, English is actually a not great choice for a global language because it's so unphonetic.
But don't expect a non-native speaker to pronounce "pothole" correctly...