16 Jun
2023
16 Jun
'23
10:18 p.m.
On 6/16/23, markus schnalke <meillo(a)marmaro.de> wrote:
[2023-06-16 07:07] "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson(a)gmail.com>
German also has a ligature letter called eszet that is a fusion of a
long s (the one that resembles the English letter f) and a short s.
It is used when a 's' sound is immediately preceded by a long vowel or
a diphthong and not followed by a consonant. When the glyph for eszet
isn't available 'ss' is substituted, as in the word 'strasse'
(street).
-Paul W.
For inſtance, the United States uſed to employ a non-final lowercaſe S
in the founding documents of its preſent government, where you can see
exhibits of the "Congreſs of the United States".
In old German, up to WWII, namely in Fraktur (the printed letters)
and Sütterlin (the handwritten letters) both kinds of S are
present.
Today, the long-S has only survived in some old company and
restaurant names, many of them changing by and by to the end-S,
because younger Germans can't read long-S and don't understand it
anymore.