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

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

#251

Post by pluma »

matt4077 wrote: post #73
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…

This really doesn't have much of any effect on anybody–as you noticed yourself. It's for use in ALL CAPS, which is mostly done in software these days (i. e. headlines formatted with CSS), so you actually don't have to type it. It in fact simplifies lots of things, because the ß->SS capitalisation screws up all sorts of algorithms: It's unusual to replace a single lower caps letter with two capital letters. It's also…

As a developer the ß->SS transformation has been one of my pet peeves about digital German. Uppercase meant destroying data. It's awkward. The ẞ glyph fixes that.

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

#252

Post by germanier »

Tomte wrote: post #164
3131s wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can be said about every feature of every language at some point in time.

Sure. Language changes and that is good. It's not good when an unelected body decides on language changes, without that change already extant and in use by a significant part of the speakers.

This body was (on the German side) put in place by the Kultusministerkonferenz. Their recommendation don't "change" the language (and never could do so). It just says what administration and schools have to use. Everybody else is free to do whatever they want (and many publishers have their own version of the rules).

The changes that were made before (such as the ones in 1996, 1901, or 1876) were made by similar bodies.

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

#253

Post by pluma »

pgeorgi wrote: post #192
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…

"Personally I'd rather use composing" Then use a keyboard with a compose key: compose-s-s for ß is already typical, set up compose-S-s for the few cases you need ẞ.

I'm on Ubuntu and have a laptop with a Menu key, so I rebound that to Compose. compose-S-S also works, btw, as does compose-s-s with capslock.

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

#254

Post by nicky0 »

yehi wrote: post #163
freehunter wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English lets you omit the noun and only use a pronoun. Colloquial English lets you omit the subject sometimes, too. And it doesn't have official gendered pronouns. This sentence is short. It is short. "What did you do today?" "Rode bike" Sometimes we even use genders for nouns even though it's not official: The ship sank. She sank. Compared to German: The dog jumped on the table and bit the man . Aww shit there are t…

the benefit of languages with cases is that you can switch the order of the sentence without changing the meaning. In those languages I can say "the dog bit the person" and "the (accusative) person bit the (nominative) dog" and it would not change the meaning of the sentence but it would allow me to emphasize one object more.

The person, the dog bit.

- Yoda

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

#255

Post by qznc »

tptacek wrote: post #29
bla2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is ambiguity. For example, "Masse" and "Maße" are two different words meaning "mass" and "measures". There is a difference, if you drink beer "in Maßen" or "in Massen" (in moderation or en masse).

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

int_19h wrote: post #222
dctoedt wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As a foreign speaker, I find some of your examples curious, because for them it would actually make it harder for me to deal with English if we went with those suggestions. Reason being that some of these words reflect similar semantic changes in my language, and losing them would feel unnatural. "Who" vs "whom" is a good example. "It's" vs "its" is also bothersome, but for a different reason - this probably has to d…

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

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 with a US layout for coding I do not care.

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

#258

Post by pluma »

cbmueller wrote: post #58
rb2k_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW, in all of them the "sz" spans a syllable boundary (yes, even "Szene" although I despise the syllabic "S" with a vengeance because it's so awkward).

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

#259

Post by nicky0 »

int_19h wrote: post #228
mzs wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For us Poles it's a toss-up whether MICHAŁ is interpreted as MICHAL or MICHAK at borders.

Wait, how does it become K suddenly? I mean, if it's something other than L, shouldn't it then really be W?

It looks a bit like A K.

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

#260

Post by germanier »

emodendroket wrote: post #172
smsm42 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those is more like ram/ewe, just words to signify specific objects having gender. But words themselves don't have grammatical gender, not like in Russian and German, where every noun is gendered and all (well, most) adjectives/verbs/etc. have to be modified to fit the gender of the noun. Presents tons of problems for localization, because a) you have to have 3 separate ways of saying the same and b) you can n…

I assume Russian and German are like French and Spanish, where the standard practice is just to use the masculine version if the gender is unknown.

It once was (and e.g. newspapers still generally only use the masculine form) but this is a very political question. At work we are ordered to use e.g. Bürger/-in (others use Bürgerin oder Bürger which is just both forms written out). Sometimes there is gender-neutral word (such as Lehrkraft instead of Lehrer) that is a good alternative.
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