From: Gerd Schumacher (Gerd-Schumacher@gmx.de)
Date: Sun Dec 28 2003 - 19:36:14 EST
Somme additional information
1. The Umlaut
In German the supralinear e may be used as a variation of the diaeresis
above a, o, and u. Though it is old fashioned, indeed, it is still
understandable, and might be used for invitation cards and the like. I don’t know a modern
font with it, but I got at least one book, in which the supralinear e is
used. It was published in 1830.
2. The long s
It has been abandoned from the Roman alphabet in Germany in the mid of the
19th century.
3. The Eszet
In many fonts the Eszet is clearly recognizable as a ligated long- and round
s. In – I think all – European languages the double s was written that way
very frequently since the 13th century. It seems to have been invented in
Italy.
Later z has been borrowed from Greek to write the voiceless s in most
European languages. So in Fraktur, for example, the long s was ligated with the
(long) z, maybe to indicate the voicelessness or possibly for typographical
reasons only.
Usually there is no ß on Swiss typewriters, because in Swiss pronounciation
there are many syllable-boundaries between the two s-parts of the common
German ß.
BTW “sharp s “ is a primary school name, which shall mean “voiceless”, but a
voicelesses satellite-phoneme’s pronounciation definitely cannot be
sharpened.
Gerd
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