16 Jun
2023
16 Jun
'23
11:46 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 12:18 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
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.
Not a short s, but a z, as the name indicates: es-zett, S-Z. This
reflects the use of z in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant
sound distinct from s, derived from /t/ by the High German sound shift but
distinct from original /s/. When the distinction was lost in the 13C, z
came to be used for its modern sound /ts/, but the ligature came to
represent the merged /s/.