From: Adam Twardoch (list.adam@twardoch.com)
Date: Mon May 07 2007 - 07:53:37 CDT
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
>> 4. Lowercase ß is graphologically derived from the ligation
>> of long s and z. (And also has at least two distinct
>> shape traditions, one of which is known as the "3" shape.)
> Yes.
That is plainly untrue. "ß" developed in a two-wise way: as a ligation
of long s and round s, and as a ligation of long s and z. German adopted
unified spelling rules only in 1901. Before that, both in the middle
ages and in the humanist period, German spelling differed much. For
example, "Thor" and "Tor" were equal variants of spelling the word
meaning "gate".
Short S was denoted by different writers differently (as Å¿s or Å¿z, which
looked like ſʒ). The graphical shape of the ß ligature developed
independently in these two ways.
This dichotomy still shows itself in a small minority practice of
uppercasing ß as "SZ" rather than "SS". Incidentally, this practice is
understandable for most German readers (though not actively practiced),
i.e. "GROSZMAUL" or "MASZGEBLICH" is understandable as the uppercasing
of Großmaul or maßgeblich.
One interesting issue is that in the 1996 spelling reform the status of
ß as a single letter has been finally confirmed. In the previous
spelling, the general rule was that short vowels are denoted by
following them by doubled consonant letters while long vowels are
followed by single consonant letters. So writing "met" always indicates
a long "e:" while "mett" indicates a short "e".
In case of "s"/"ß", it was confusing. Following a vowel with a single
"s" always denoted a long vowel, following a vowel with a doubled "ss"
indicated a short vowel, but following a vowel with "ß" did not give
clue whether the vowel was short or long. So "Ruß" was actually
pronounced "ru:s" as if the "ß" stood for a single consonant letter, but
"Nuß" was pronounced "nus" as if the "ß" stood for a doubled consonant
letter.
The 1996 spelling removed this uncertainty by changing the spelling of
all "ß" into "ss" when the preceding vowel was to be pronounced short.
Today’s spelling of "Nuss" or "dass" underlines that the vowels are to
be pronounced short.
The uppercasing of "ß" as "SS" but also as "SZ" defeats this clear rule.
If I uppercase the word "Rußpartikel" into "RUSSPARTIKEL", suddenly the
natural way of pronouncing the "U" changes from short to long, so the
reader is confused. The confusion is even bigger now, after the reform,
because the special "undefined" treatment of "ß" no longer exists, so
readers are used to "ß" being always treated as a single consonant
letter, not as a ligature of a doubled consonant.
As I said, even writing "SZ" does not help. To remain logical,
consistent and reader-friendly, "ß" needs (at some point) to assume a
single graphemic shape in the uppercase.
I believe that it should be an exciting task for type designers now to
come up with a new form. In my opinion, this issue is definitely not one
that is completely solved. We’re in the middle of a slow transition
period for "ß". The 1996 reform started it and showed the direction.
A.
-- Adam Twardoch | Language Typography Unicode Fonts OpenType | twardoch.com | silesian.com | fontlab.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon May 07 2007 - 07:57:42 CDT