From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jan 08 2004 - 21:38:55 EST
At 04:08 PM 1/8/2004, D. Starner wrote:
>Otto Stolz <Otto.Stolz@uni-konstanz.de> wrote:
>
> > Gerd Schumacher wrote:
> > > The long s [...] has been abandoned from the Roman alphabet in Germany
> > > in the mid of the 19th century.
> >
> > You mean the 20th century, don't you?
> >
> > I have a facsimile reprint of the 1914 issue of "Zupfgeigenhansel"
> > (a renowned song-book), which is set in Roman type ("Antiqua", in
> > German) and uses the long-S consistently, according to German
> > orthographic rules.
>
>I believe it's an exception. I have a German mineralogical dictionary
>from 1849 that is in Roman type and doesn't use the long-S. The mathematical
>books from the late 1800s and early 1900s that I've looked at all consistenly
>in Roman type without the long-S. The Library of Congress has a German
>biography of the Wright brothers written in the 1909 that is in Roman type
>and doesn't use the long-S.
>
>I'm pretty sure the long-s was lost from Roman type in the usual case by
>the late 1800s.
I don't recall seeing it in ordinary text and I'm sure I've read non-Fraktur
books older than 1941. Unfortunately I can neither cite nor access any
examples.
I was able to locate a facsimile of a dedication which has both Fraktur and
Antiqua text (possibly hand-lettered) from 1862. The Fraktur text uses the
long s, the Antiqua does not.
However, I'm not surprised by Otto's specimen though. Because of the existence
of Fraktur, readers could be expected to be familiar with the concept of a
long-s,
so even if its use in Antiqua was dying out, or had otherwise died out, it
would
not impede the reader in the same way as if it was used in a modern text.
Somehow I'm not surprised that the example with it is a song book and the
counter-
example is a technical work. But perhaps that's pure speculation on my part.
A./
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