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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

#371

Post by int_19h »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #344
int_19h wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly does provide some extra flavors for poets to play with. It also makes translations to other languages hell, when noun genders are used for allegoric purposes.

> when noun genders are used for allegoric purposes Ugh, really? How disappointing.

Just to give an example, consider this short poem:

https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ein_Fichtenbaum_steht_einsam

Now try translating this to a language where the tree names are gendered differently, such that e.g. both are male, or both are female.

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

#372

Post by int_19h »

emodendroket wrote: post #327
int_19h wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Russian, at least, the grammatical gender would correspond to that of the word user - which is always masculine.

In Spanish there's usuario and usuaria depending on the gender of the user.

You can technically construct a female-gendered noun for "user" in Russian as well - there's a generic construct for that - it just looks really awkward.

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

#373

Post by emodendroket »

int_19h wrote: post #372
emodendroket wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spanish there's usuario and usuaria depending on the gender of the user.

You can technically construct a female-gendered noun for "user" in Russian as well - there's a generic construct for that - it just looks really awkward.

I see. My sense is that the Spanish one is actually used if you do know the user is female, but of course most software doesn't know the gender and defaults to masculine form.

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

#374

Post by interfixus »

emodendroket wrote: post #306
interfixus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's silly. Gendered nouns are no hassle whatsoever in your native language, but a major stumbling block in one you wish to learn later on, believe me. Danish is my primary language. We are blessed with only two genders, not three as in German. As closely related as the two languages are, I really cannot make a useful gender mapping from one to the other. That's one - not the only, but definitely one - reason I…

My native language is English.

My bad. Unfounded inference.

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

#375

Post by yellowapple »

ams6110 wrote: post #181
yellowapple wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Do tell, which key is this "Compose"?

I have it set to Caps Lock. GNOME used to (and might still) have a setting for it in its keyboard preferences; I think KDE and Xfce do, too. Otherwise, you can add "setxkbmap -option compose:caps" to your ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc (whichever you're using) or to some other startup script.

Some old Unix workstations actually do have a physical "Compose" key on their keyboards. Alas, I do not have such a keyboard, but it ain't like I use Caps Lock all that much anyway.

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

#376

Post by smsm42 »

int_19h wrote: post #371
throwaway91111 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when noun genders are used for allegoric purposes Ugh, really? How disappointing.

Just to give an example, consider this short poem: https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ein_Fichtenbaum_steht_einsam Now try translating this to a language where the tree names are gendered differently, such that e.g. both are male, or both are female.

That is exactly what happened to the Russian translation:

https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0_%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%...

In Russian, both words are female.

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

#377

Post by int_19h »

smsm42 wrote: post #376
int_19h wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to give an example, consider this short poem: https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ein_Fichtenbaum_steht_einsam Now try translating this to a language where the tree names are gendered differently, such that e.g. both are male, or both are female.

That is exactly what happened to the Russian translation: https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0_%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%... In Russian, both words are female.

Yeah, Russian is the one I was thinking of.

Although it's actually more complicated, because there's more than one Russian translation, and this problem was tackled in different ways. Lermontov just did a straightforward translation, changing the implied meaning. Tutchev and Fet both changed the pine to another tree such that the word is male: cedar or oak (in the latter case, this also required changing the described environment in which it grows).

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