The ß — Eszett (IPA /ɛs'tsɛt/) in German or scharfes S (sharp S) if spelled out — is a letter used only in the German alphabet. It alternates with ss under certain conditions, and it is replaced by ss when there is no ß available. ß is nearly unique among the letters of Western alphabet in that it has no upper case form since it never occurs initially (one of the few other examples is kra, used in Greenlandic). The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ... German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ... This article is about letter, a written message from one party to another. ... The German alphabet consists of the same 26 letters as the modern Latin alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters—basic written symbols—each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... Majuscules or capital letters (in the Roman alphabet: A, B, C, ...) are one type of case in a writing system. ... Kra (ĸ) is a character used when writing the Kalaallisut language spoken in Greenland. ... The Kalaallisut language is an Eskimo-Aleut language spoken in Greenland and closely related to Canadian languages like Inuktitut. ...

Origin

origins of the ligature ß

There are two different origins of the ligature ß: origins of the ß-ligature, taken from de:Bild:Szlig. ...

• Ligatur ſs: a ligature of long s (ſ, looks like an f without bar) and (normal) round s.
• Ligatur ſz: a ligature of ſ and z.

The ligature of long ſ and round s was used antiqua typefaces, for instance in English or French. It fell into disuse when the long ſ was abandoned in the 18th century. In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. ... The long or medial s (ſ) is a form of the minuscule letter s that was formerly used when the s occurred within or at the beginning of the word, for example ſinfulneſs (sinfulness). The modern letterform was called the terminal or short s. ... In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. ... Antiqua describes a form of typeface in which the lines in letters are not broken up. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ...

In German blackletter typefaces, the ligature of long ſ and z was used since the Middle Ages. In the second Germanic sound shift, Germanic [t] became [s] or [ts]. At first, both were spelled zz, but soon, they were differentiated as ſz and tz. Originally, that s-sound was different from the old Germanic s-sound, but this difference was lost in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the spellings ſz and ss became confused. The modern distinction between the two spellings emerged after many centuries. Until the German spelling reform of 1901, the use varied from region to region. German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ... In typography, a typeface is a co-ordinated set of character designs, which usually comprises an alphabet of letters, a set of numerals and a set of punctuation marks. ... The second Germanic sound shift (zweite germanische Lautverschiebung in German), which took place during the 7th and 8th centuries, separated High German from Low German. ... Natural languages often develop cumbersome manners of spelling words. ...

The usual typeface for German was blackletter. In the late 18th and early 19th century, when more and more German texts were printed in antiqua, the typesetter looked for an antiqua counterpart of the blackletter ſz ligature because they wanted to preserve the common distinction between ſz and ss. The preservation of this difference in antiqua typefaces became obligatory with the German spelling reform of 1996. In typography, a typeface is a co-ordinated set of character designs, which usually comprises an alphabet of letters, a set of numerals and a set of punctuation marks. ... Antiqua describes a form of typeface in which the lines in letters are not broken up. ... The German spelling reform (Rechtschreibreform) was an international agreement signed in 1996 by the governments of the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland), concerning the reform of German spelling. ...

different forms of antiqua ß

There have been four different typographical solutions for the form of the antiqua ß: different types of modern ß, taken from de:Bild:Sz_modern. ...

1. letter combination ſs (not as a ligature, but as a single type),
2. ligature of ſ and s,
3. ligature of ſ and a kind of blackletter z (blackletter z looks similar to a "3"; this solution is closest to the original blackletter ligature),
4. a ligature ſ and a kind of 3 so that the ligature resembles a Greek β (a compromise of the second and the third solution).

Currently, most antiqua ß are shaped according to the second or the fourth solution. The third solution is seldomly found, and the first has fallen into disuse.

The typographer Jan Tschichold claimed that the German blackletter ß originated as a ligature of ſ and s. His view is widespread, even though historical linguists say that there's no argument to support it. Tschichold's claim is based on a picture drawn by himself that shows how ſ and s melt together in blackletter, and on a reference to the ſs-ligature in antiqua. A historical specimen of the former has never been found, and the latter is true, but pointless. Jan Tschichold was a German typographer and book designer. ...

Usage

In today's German orthography, “ß” is used to denote a voiceless “s” (IPA sound [s]) at the beginning of a syllable (e.g. “Stra-ße” (= street)) or after a long vowel if other words of the family have it (e.g., es fließt (“it flows”) because of flie-ßen (“to flow”)) whereas “ss” is used if the the s sound belongs to two syllables (e.g., ge-flos-sen (“floated”, past participle)) or after a short vowel if other words of the family use a double s (e.g., es floss (“it floated”)). The orthography of a language is the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ...

Older usages and spelling reform

Before the German spelling reform of 1996, there was an additional rule that “ss” could only be used if bridging two syllables and must otherwise be replaced by “ß”, even if it follows a short vowel. As a result, floss was formerly spelled floß. The German spelling reform (Rechtschreibreform) was an international agreement signed in 1996 by the governments of the German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland), concerning the reform of German spelling. ...

The spelling reform also affected place names, e.g. "Rußland" (Russia) became "Russland" and "Preßburg" (Bratislava) became "Pressburg". The Russian Federation (Russian: Росси́йская Федера́ция, transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija), or Russia (Russian: Росси́я, transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija), is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. ... Bratislava - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...

Switzerland and Liechtenstein

Switzerland and Liechtenstein officially abolished the use of "ß" in the 1930s: in schools, correspondence or newspapers, "ß" is not used. Major Swiss publishing houses for books still use it since they address the entire German speaking market. The Swiss Confederation or Switzerland is a landlocked federal state in Europe, with neighbours Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein. ... The Principality of Liechtenstein (German: Fürstentum Liechtenstein) is a tiny, doubly landlocked country (one of two such countries, the other being Uzbekistan) in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to its west and by Austria to its east. ... Events and trends Technology Jet engine invented Science Nuclear fission discovered by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann Pluto, the ninth planet from the Sun, is discovered by Clyde Tombaugh British biologist Arthur Tansley coins term ecosystem War, peace and politics Socialists proclaim The death of Capitalism Rise to... 1. ...

Replacement and all-upper-case

If no ß is available, ss is used instead. This ss may be hyphenated (e.g. Stras-se 'street'; compare Stra-ße). A hyphen ( - ) is a punctuation mark. ...

If entire words are capitalized, SS is used (e.g. STRASSE). Excepted are legal documents, where capitalized names may retain an ß to prevent ambiguity, e.g., HANS STRAßER. Majuscules or capital letters (in the Roman alphabet: A, B, C, ...) are one type of case in a writing system. ...

In the old orthography, the Duden encouraged the use of "SZ" in cases where "SS" would produce an ambiguous result, as with "IN MASZEN" (in limited amounts) vs. "IN MASSEN" (in massive amounts). Duden is a German dictionary, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880, currently in its 23rd edition. ...

upper case ß in the 1957 Duden of Leipzig

There have been repeated attempts to introduce an upper case ß. One of the best known examples is the Eastern German 1957 Duden. A recent proposal to the unicode consortium for capital double s by Anreas Stötzner was rejected in 2004. copy of de:Bild:Eszett_Leipziger_Duden_1957. ... East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), German Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), was a Communist state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in the former Soviet occupation zone of Germany. ... 1957 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Duden is a German dictionary, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880, currently in its 23rd edition. ... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ... 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

ß and β

"ß" should not be confused with the lowercase Greek letter beta ("β"), which it closely resembles, particularly to the eyes of non-German readers, but to which it is unrelated. Indeed the resemblance is not close enough to enable substitution of the one with the other in typeset material without the result looking extremely unprofessional, comparable to substituting lowercase Greek letter omega ("ω") for "w" in English text. Any typeset material should use the ß; where that letter is unavailable, the substitution "ss" for "ß" is correct. Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Beta (upper case Β, lower case β) is the 2nd letter of the Greek alphabet. ... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... Omega (Ω ω) (literally, big O) is the 24th and last letter of the Greek alphabet. ...

The differences between "ß" and "β" in most typefaces are

• β reaches below the line while ß does not.
• β connects the vertical part on the left with the end of the horizontal near the bottom; ß does not.
• β uses Greek rules of stroke thickness (slanted strokes are thinnest), ß uses Latin rules (horizontal strokes are thinnest).

However, such substitution once was common when describing beta test versions of application programs for older operating systems, such as classic Mac OS, whose character encodings did not support easy use of Greek letters. Also, the original IBM DOS codepage, CP437 (aka OEM-US), conflates the two characters, assigning them the same codepoint (0xE1) and a glyph that minimises their differences. In software engineering, development stage terminology expresses how far through the development sequence things have progressed and how much further development a product may require. ... Mac OS, which stands for Macintosh Operating System, is Apple Computer’s name for the operating systems for Macintosh computers. ... A character encoding is a code that pairs a set of characters (such as an alphabet or syllabary) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses. ... IBM PC or MS-DOS Codepage 437, also known as DOS-US or OEM-US, is the original character set of the IBM PC, from 1981. ...

Also note that in German handwriting, the ß is written very similar to β, reaching below the line.

Miscellaneous

When ordering German words alphabetically, the collation rules say that "ß" should be treated as if it were a double "s". So, for example: "Ruß" < "Russe" < "rußen" < "Russland". Some people sort "ß" like a single "s" but this is not recommended. This article needs cleanup. ...

The ß is also used by some in romanizing the Sumerian language [in which it represented ...]. A romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. ... The Sumerian language of ancient Sumer was spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BC. Sumerian was replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language around 2000 BC, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial and scientific language in Mesopotamia until about 1 AD. Then, it...

The ß character is popular in Hungarian "text speak" used with mobile phones, replacing the grapheme sz, thus using one letter fewer in the SMS. The Hungarian language is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in adjacent areas of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Slovenia (all territories lost after World War I). ... A received SMS being announced on a Nokia phone. ... A stylised representation of a mobile phone A mobile phone is a device which behaves as a normal telephone whilst being able to move over a wide area ( cordless phone which acts as a telephone only within a limited range). ... A grapheme designates the atomic unit in written language. ...

The HTML entity for "ß" is ß. Its codepoint in the ISO 8859 character encoding versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and identically in Unicode is 223, or DF in hexadecimal. HTML has been in use since 1991 (note that the W3C international standard is now XHTML), but the first standardized version with a reasonably complete treatment of international characters was version 4. ... ISO 8859, more formally ISO/IEC 8859, is a joint ISO and IEC standard for 8-bit character encodings for use by computers. ... ISO 8859-1, more formally cited as ISO/IEC 8859-1 or less formally as Latin-1, is part 1 of ISO/IEC 8859, a standard character encoding defined by ISO. It encodes what it refers to as Latin alphabet no. ... ISO 8859-2, more formally cited as ISO/IEC 8859-2 or less formally as Latin-2, is part 2 of ISO/IEC 8859, a standard character encoding defined by ISO. It encodes what it refers to as Latin alphabet no. ... ISO 8859-3, also known as Latin-3 or South European is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ... ISO 8859-4, also known as Latin-4 or North European, is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ... ISO 8859-9, also known as Latin-5 or Turkish, is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ... ISO 8859-10, also known as Latin-6, is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ... ISO 8859-13, also known as Latin-7 or Baltic Rim, is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ... ISO 8859-14, also known as Latin-8 or Celtic, is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ... ISO 8859-15 is part 15 of ISO 8859, a standard character encoding defined by ISO. It is also known as Latin-9, and unofficially as Latin-0 but not as Latin-15. ... ISO 8859-16, also known as Latin-10 or South-Eastern European, is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ... In mathematics, hexadecimal or simply hex is a numeral system with a radix or base of 16 usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F or a–f. ...

On Windows computers with an American keyboard, the ß can be typed by holding Alt, typing either +00DF, 0223, or 225 on the right number pad, and then releasing alt (the latter two depend on the selected input language and on the code page). On Macintosh computers with an American keyboard, the ß can be typed by holding Option [Alt] and pressing the "s" key. Microsoft Windows is a range of commercial operating environments for personal computers. ... Code page is the traditional IBM term used for a specific character encoding table: a mapping in which a sequence of bits, usually a single octet representing integer values 0 through 255, is associated with a specific character. ... Macintosh, also known as Mac, is a family of personal computers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. ...

Links

• Andreas Stötzner: Capital Double S. Proposal to the Unicode Consortium (pdf) (http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2888.pdf)