16 Jun
2023
16 Jun
'23
11:07 a.m.
At 2023-06-16T14:22:22+1000, Damian McGuckin wrote:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2023, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
That is the price of trying to leave things better than one found them.
But I may suffer from an excessive familiarity
with this material.
Yes. Me too. Maybe that is a sad comment on the both of us. Why do Greeks have an alternate way of writing sigma!
We English-speakers used to have an alternative way of writing it, if
you regard the Latin alphabet's "S" as cognate (so to speak) with the
Greek sigma (and I think doing so is defensible). It's even in Unicode
with a low code point, U+017F.
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".
It can take the modern reader a "long S" time to not read that "s" as
an
"f".
And if you think that's difficult enough, check out, IIRC, the Arabic
and Devanagari scripts where you can have different initial, medial, and
final forms for letters.
Follow-ups ſhould probably be confined to groff@; I'll ſtop now leſt we
get ſent to the COFF liſt for groſs tranſgreſſions of topicality.
(Although if anyone wants to tell me whether non-final s was applied to
the trailing ends of non-final morphemes _within_ words, I'm all ears.)
Regards,
Branden
16 Jun
16 Jun
1:43 p.m.
New subject: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms)
Hoi.
[2023-06-16 07:07] "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson(a)gmail.com>
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. Newer names don't use it the long-S, even if they are
written in Fraktur letters, which would demand for the long-S.
For example the beer brand Warsteiner changed the long-S in 2013 to
the end-S.
https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Warsteiner-Logo-history.png
(Although if anyone wants to tell me whether non-final
s was applied to
the trailing ends of non-final morphemes _within_ words, I'm all ears.)
I'm no language expert, so I don't really know what morphemes are.
What I do know is that the round-S (i.e. end-S) is applied to the
end of words, parts of compound words (typical for German), and in
some situatuations even to parts of words. -- But only in Fraktur
and Sütterlin, not in modern German (latin alphabet), which does
no longer have a long-S.
Examples:
End of word: Haus (engl: house)
Middle of word: Kiſte (engl: box)
Compound word: Hausmaus (engl: house mouse)
Hauſmaus would be wrong.
In such cases the end-S is in the middle of the word. Such
compounds are typical for German. If you have an english word
like ``downhill'', where two separate words joined into one,
the end-S of the first part would still remain an end-S,
although it moved into the middle of the word. (Sorry, I
cannot find an english example where the first word part ends
with s.)
There's a famous example for the difference the distinguishing
between s and ſ can make:
Wachſtube, i.e. Wach-Stube (engl: guardhouse)
Wachstube, i.e. Wachs-Tube (engl: wax tube)
In modern German context is necessary to know which meaning
of Wachstube is the right one, in old German it's clear from the
writing.
Besides compounds German is also infamous for it's prefixes. If
you combine the prefix ``aus'' (engl: out) with other words, the
end-S remains as well:
ausgezeichnet (engl: excellent -- wordly: out-marked)
Ausfahrt (engl: exit for vehicles -- wordly: out-drive)
Using the long-S in these situation would be wrong.
That means: Whenever one uses a word, that can stand alone (and is
thus well-known for it's shape), as part of a larger word, the part
stays the same, even within other words, keeping its end-S.
Generally I'd say, but take this only as a rule of thumb, because
I'm not enough expert in this: You use an end-S in all situation
where you would want to avoid a ligature of the s with the next
letter. Long-S can have ligatures with the following letter and
there are common ones in German. (In Wachſtube an st-ligature
would be preferred.) End-S will never have ligatures with the
following letter.
This at least is the situation concerning old German, as
understood by someone with curiousity for the topic but without
real lingual knowledge.
meillo
3:39 p.m.
New subject: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms)
I ſaw Mommy kiſſing ſanta Klaus, underneath the miſtletoe laſt night ...
re: compound words in English ending is "s" - bossman, bossmonkey, etc.
Though in the case of "Godzone", a somewhat tongue-in-cheek name for New
Zealand derived from "God's Own", a tribute to New Zealand's natural
wonders, the "s" has been replaced by "z" ...
Yes, it's an interesting feature of European alphabet development.
Wesley Parish
On 16/06/23 19:43, markus schnalke wrote:
Hoi.
[2023-06-16 07:07] "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson(a)gmail.com>
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. Newer names don't use it the long-S, even if they are
written in Fraktur letters, which would demand for the long-S.
For example the beer brand Warsteiner changed the long-S in 2013 to
the end-S.
https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Warsteiner-Logo-history.png
(Although if anyone wants to tell me whether
non-final s was applied to
the trailing ends of non-final morphemes _within_ words, I'm all ears.)
I'm no language expert, so I don't really know what morphemes are.
What I do know is that the round-S (i.e. end-S) is applied to the
end of words, parts of compound words (typical for German), and in
some situatuations even to parts of words. -- But only in Fraktur
and Sütterlin, not in modern German (latin alphabet), which does
no longer have a long-S.
Examples:
End of word: Haus (engl: house)
Middle of word: Kiſte (engl: box)
Compound word: Hausmaus (engl: house mouse)
Hauſmaus would be wrong.
In such cases the end-S is in the middle of the word. Such
compounds are typical for German. If you have an english word
like ``downhill'', where two separate words joined into one,
the end-S of the first part would still remain an end-S,
although it moved into the middle of the word. (Sorry, I
cannot find an english example where the first word part ends
with s.)
There's a famous example for the difference the distinguishing
between s and ſ can make:
Wachſtube, i.e. Wach-Stube (engl: guardhouse)
Wachstube, i.e. Wachs-Tube (engl: wax tube)
In modern German context is necessary to know which meaning
of Wachstube is the right one, in old German it's clear from the
writing.
Besides compounds German is also infamous for it's prefixes. If
you combine the prefix ``aus'' (engl: out) with other words, the
end-S remains as well:
ausgezeichnet (engl: excellent -- wordly: out-marked)
Ausfahrt (engl: exit for vehicles -- wordly: out-drive)
Using the long-S in these situation would be wrong.
That means: Whenever one uses a word, that can stand alone (and is
thus well-known for it's shape), as part of a larger word, the part
stays the same, even within other words, keeping its end-S.
Generally I'd say, but take this only as a rule of thumb, because
I'm not enough expert in this: You use an end-S in all situation
where you would want to avoid a ligature of the s with the next
letter. Long-S can have ligatures with the following letter and
there are common ones in German. (In Wachſtube an st-ligature
would be preferred.) End-S will never have ligatures with the
following letter.
This at least is the situation concerning old German, as
understood by someone with curiousity for the topic but without
real lingual knowledge.
meillo
10:18 p.m.
New subject: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms)
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. 
11:46 p.m.
New subject: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms)
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/.
11:51 p.m.
New subject: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms)
On Fri, 16 Jun 2023, John Cowan wrote:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 12:18 PM Paul Winalski
<paul.winalski(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I've seen ß used in some copies of the Geneva Bible with exactly the
modern German sense, as a ligature of long s and normal s.
-uso.
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/.
17 Jun
17 Jun
12:19 a.m.
New subject: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms)
On 16/06/23, Steve Nickolas wrote:
I've seen ß used in some copies of the Geneva
Bible with exactly the
modern German sense, as a ligature of long s and normal s.
There are two origins of this character. One ſs and one ſʒ.
You can see it here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Sz_modern.svg
1 and 2 are ſs, 3 and 4 are ſʒ
Now it gets even more off-topic (sorry):
My personal favourite (and the one I've adopted in my handwriting) is
the one used in Berlin street signs, obviously ſʒ:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Strasse-FF-Cst-Berlin.p…
Interestingly I've noticed the Bonn street signs look rather similar, maybe
it's a thing capitals do.
aap
334
days inactive
334
days old
6 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
Angelo Papenhoff -
G. Branden Robinson -
John Cowan -
markus schnalke -
Paul Winalski -
Steve Nickolas -
Wesley Parish