From: Michael J. Hußmann (michael_at_michael-hussmann.de)
Date: Tue Sep 10 2002 - 18:15:43 PDT
Oliver Brose (oliver.brose_at_t-online.de) wrote:
> Well, you can pronounce it "ess-tzet", but you would rather write
> "sz" ;) Some people prefer to say "sharp s" to avoid confusion. I
> like the little bugger, and it is a shame what the current german
> spelling rules do to it... :/
> I will not make any linguistic statement about what it _is_ though *cough*
As a glyph, the sharp s is a ligature of the two kinds of "s" formerly
used in German broken script (Fraktur). The "long s" looked somewhat like
"f" and the "round s" was our familiar "s". Depending on context, a
double s was sometimes written as "ss" (two round s) and sometimes as
(approximately) "fs"; the latter was contracted to a ligature, the single
glyph for the sz.
- Michael
Michael J. Hussmann
E-mail: michael_at_michael-hussmann.de
WWW: http://michael-hussmann.de
-- Read the List FAQ/Etiquette: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Read the Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ This is the NewtonTalk mailing list - http://www.newtontalk.net/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon May 26 2003 - 12:59:21 PDT