Ss

Template:Multiple image

In German orthography, the letter ß, called (, S-Z) or (, "sharp S"), represents the Template:IPAslink phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Template:Wikt-lang combines the names of the letters of Template:Angbr () and Template:Angbr () in German. The character's Unicode names in English are double s, sharp s and eszett. The Eszett letter is currently used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph Template:Angbr if the ß-character is unavailable. In the 20th century, the ß-character was replaced with ss in the spelling of Swiss Standard German (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), while remaining Standard German spelling in other varieties of the German language.

The letter originated as the Template:Angbr digraph used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of Template:Angbr (long s) and Template:Angbr (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding Template:Angbr.Template:Efn This developed from an earlier usage of Template:Angbr in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant that did not sound the same as Template:Angbr; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as Template:Angbr in some situations.

Traditionally, Template:Angbr did not have a capital form, and was capitalized as Template:Angbr. Some type designers introduced capitalized variants. In 2017, the Council for German Orthography officially adopted a capital form Template:Angbr as an acceptable variant, ending a long debate. Since 2024 the capital has been preferred over Template:Angbr.

Usage

Current usage

In standard German, three letters or combinations of letters commonly represent (the voiceless alveolar fricative) depending on its position in a word: Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, and Template:Angbr. According to current German orthography, Template:Angbr represents the sound :

1. when it is written after a diphthong or long vowel and is not followed by another consonant in the word stem: , , , [Exceptions: and words with final devoicing (e.g., )]; and
2. when a word stem ending with Template:Angbr takes an inflectional ending beginning with a consonant: , .

In verbs with roots where the vowel changes length, this means that some forms may be written with Template:Angbr, others with Template:Angbr: , , .

The use of Template:Angbr distinguishes minimal pairs such as (, to rip) and (, to travel) on the one hand ( vs. ), and (, penance) and (, buses) on the other (long vowel before Template:Angbr, short vowel before Template:Angbr).Template:Rp

Some proper names may use Template:Angbr after a short vowel, following older orthography; this is also true of some words derived from proper names (e.g., , named after Ernst Litfaß).Template:Rp

If no Template:Angbr is available in a font, then the official orthography calls for Template:Angbr to be replaced with Template:Angbr. Since 2024, when writing in capital letters Template:Angbr has been preferred, but Template:Angbr may be used instead. Previously, Template:Angbr was the preferred form.

In pre-1996 orthography

File:RechtschreibreformBeiStrassennamen.jpg

Replacement street sign in Aachen, adapted to the 1996 spelling reform (old: , new: )

According to the orthography in use in German prior to the German orthography reform of 1996, Template:Angbr was written to represent :

1. word internally following a long vowel or diphthong: , ; and
2. at the end of a syllable or before a consonant, so long as is the end of the word stem: , , .Template:Rp

In the old orthography, word stems spelled Template:Angbr internally could thus be written Template:Angbr in certain instances, without this reflecting a change in vowel length: (from ), (from ), and (from ), (comparative: ).Template:Rp In rare occasions, the difference between Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr could help differentiate words: (expiration of a pass) and (appropriate).Template:Rp

File:ABSCHUSZGERAET.jpg

Capitalization as SZ on a Bundeswehr crate ( for the pre-reform spelling 'launcher')

As in the new orthography, it was possible to write Template:Angbr for Template:Angbr if the character was not available. When using all capital letters, the pre-1996 rules called for rendering Template:Angbr as Template:Angbr except when there was ambiguity, in which case it should be rendered as Template:Angbr. The common example for such a case is ( "in moderate amounts") vs. ( "in massive amounts"); in this example the spelling difference between Template:Angbr vs. Template:Angbr produces completely different meanings.

Switzerland and Liechtenstein

In Swiss Standard German, Template:Angbr usually replaces every Template:Angbr. This is officially sanctioned by the reformed German orthography rules, which state in §25 E2: "" ("In Switzerland, one may always write 'ss'"). Liechtenstein follows the same practice. There are very few instances where the difference between spelling Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr affects the meaning of a word, and these can usually be told apart by context.Template:Rp

Other uses

File:Kirche Oßling AB 2011 14.JPG

Use of ß (blackletter 'ſz') in Sorbian: wyßokoſcʒ́i ("highest", now spelled wysokosći). Text of Luke 2:14, in a church in Oßling.

File:BibliaWujka.PNG

Use of ß in Polish, in 1599 Jakub Wujek Bible, in the word náßéy, which means our, and would be spelled naszej in modern orthography

Occasionally, Template:Angbr has been used in unusual ways:

• As the Greek lowercase Template:Angbr (beta). The original IBM PC CP437 contains a glyph that minimizes their differences placed between Template:Angbr (alpha) and Template:Angbr (gamma) but named "Sharp s Small". Substitution was also done using other character sets such as ISO/IEC 8859-1 even though they contain no other Greek letters. The lowercase eszett has also been misused as Template:Angbr in scientific writing and vice versa.
• In Prussian Lithuanian, as in the first book published in Lithuanian, Martynas Mažvydas' Simple Words of Catechism, as well as in Sorbian (see example on the left).
• For sadhe in Akkadian glosses, in place of the standard Template:Angbr, when that character is unavailable due to limitations of HTML.
• The letter appeared in the alphabet made by Jan Kochanowski for the Polish language, that was used from the 16th until the 18th century. It represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative () sound. It was for example used in the Jakub Wujek Bible.
• Some authors have used it in German at the beginning of words to transcribe the voiceless s of certain accents.

History

Origin and development

File:Nibelungenlied manuscript - “grozer”.jpg

Use of Middle High German letter "z" for modern "ß" in the beginning of the Nibelungenlied: "grozer" = "großer"

As a result of the High German consonant shift, Old High German developed a sound generally spelled Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr that was probably pronounced and was contrasted with a sound, probably pronounced (voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant) or (voiced alveolar retracted sibilant), depending on the place in the word, and spelled Template:Angbr. Given that Template:Angbr could also represent the affricate , some attempts were made to differentiate the sounds by spelling as Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr: (Template:Langx), (Template:Langx), (Template:Langx). In Middle High German, Template:Angbr simplified to Template:Angbr at the end of a word or after a long vowel, but was retained word internally after a short vowel: (Template:Langx) vs. (Template:Langx) and (Template:Langx).

File:Crop of vsz from History vom Herr Flordimar Cod Don 140 fol 37r.jpg

Use of the late medieval ligature Template:Angbr in Ulrich Füetrer's : "uſz" (modern German )

In the thirteenth century, the phonetic difference between Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr was lost at the beginning and end of words in all dialects except for Gottscheerish. Word-internally, Old and Middle High German Template:Angbr came to be pronounced (the voiced alveolar sibilant), while Old and Middle High German Template:Angbr continued to be pronounced . This produces the contrast between modern standard German and . The former is pronounced and comes from Template:Langx, while the latter is pronounced and comes from Template:Langx.

In the late medieval and early modern periods, was frequently spelled Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr. The earliest appearance of ligature resembling the modern Template:Angbr is in a fragment of a manuscript of the poem Wolfdietrich from around 1300.Template:Rp In the Gothic book hands and bastarda scripts of the late medieval period, Template:Angbr is written with long s and the Blackletter "tailed z", as Template:Angbr. A recognizable ligature representing the Template:Angbr digraph develops in handwriting in the early 14th century.Template:Rp

File:Crop of Der Bierbreuwer from Jost Amman's Stände und Handwerker Wellcome L0069606.jpg

An early modern printed rhyme by Hans Sachs showing several instances of ß as a clear ligature of Template:Angbr: "groß", "stoß", "Laß", "baß" (= modern "besser"), and "Faß"

By the late 1400s, the choice of spelling between Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr was usually based on the sound's position in the word rather than etymology: Template:Angbr (Template:Angbr) tended to be used in word final position: (Template:Langx, Template:Langx), (Template:Langx, Template:Langx); Template:Angbr (Template:Angbr) tended to be used when the sound occurred between vowels: (Template:Langx, Template:Langx).Template:Rp While Martin Luther's early 16th-century printings also contain spellings such as (Template:Langx), early modern printers mostly changed these to Template:Angbr: . Around the same time, printers began to systematically distinguish between (the, that [pronoun]) and (that [conjunction]).Template:Rp

In modern German, the Old and Middle High German Template:Angbr is now represented by either Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, or, if there are no related forms in which occurs intervocalically, with Template:Angbr: (Template:Langx), (Template:Langx), and (Template:Langx).

Standardization of use

The pre-1996 German use of Template:Angbr was codified by the eighteenth-century grammarians Johann Christoph Gottsched (1748) and Johann Christoph Adelung (1793) and made official for all German-speaking countries by the German Orthographic Conference of 1901. In this orthography, the use of Template:Angbr was modeled after the use of long and "round"-s in Fraktur. Template:Angbr appeared both word internally after long vowels and also in those positions where Fraktur required the second s to be a "round" or "final" s, namely the ends of syllables or the ends of words.Template:Rp In his Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854) Jacob Grimm called for Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr to be written for all instances of Middle and Old High German etymological Template:Angbr (e.g., instead of from Template:Langx); however, his etymological proposal could not overcome established usage.Template:Rp

In Austria-Hungary prior to the German Orthographic Conference of 1902, an alternative rule formulated by Johann Christian August Heyse in 1829 had been officially taught in the schools since 1879, although this spelling was not widely used. Heyse's rule matches current usage after the German orthography reform of 1996 in that Template:Angbr was only used after long vowels.Template:Rp

Use in Roman type

File:Ss from Hieronymi Aleandri Mottensis Tabulae utilißimae, Köln 1541.png

The ſs ligature used for Latin in 16th-century printing ()

File:Lang-s-Rund-s Blaeu Essen.gif

Essen with ſs-ligature reads Eßen (Latin Blaeu atlas, text printed in Antiqua, 1650s).

File:French Eszett.jpg

French usage as a ligature for ⟨ss⟩ in 1784 from Gallerie des Modes

In early modern Latin type (antiqua), a ligature similar to modern Template:Angbr developed out of a long s followed by a round s (Template:Angbr), and as such was used in languages such as Italian in alternation with Template:Angbr, usually based on requirements of space on the page.Template:Rp However, despite its resemblance to the modern Template:Angbr, this ligature was not commonly used as an equivalent to the Fraktur Template:Angbr in German. This ligature generally fell out of use in the eighteenth century, together with the use of long s in antiqua.Template:Rp German works printed in Roman type in the late 18th and early 19th centuries such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte's did not provide any equivalent to the Template:Angbr.Template:Rp

Jacob Grimm began using Template:Angbr in his (1819); however, it varied with Template:Angbr word internally.Template:Rp Grimm eventually rejected the use of the character; in their (1838), the Brothers Grimm favored writing it as Template:Angbr.Template:Rp The First Orthographic Conference in Berlin (1876) recommended that ß be represented as Template:Angbr – however, both suggestions were ultimately rejected.Template:RpTemplate:Rp In 1879, a proposal for various letter forms was published in the Journal für Buchdruckerkunst. A committee of the Typographic Society of Leipzig chose the "Sulzbacher form". In 1903, it was proclaimed as the new standard for the Eszett in Roman type.Template:Rp

Until the abolition of Fraktur in 1941, it was common for family names to be written with Template:Angbr in Fraktur and Template:Angbr in Roman type. The formal abolition resulted in inconsistencies in how names are written in modern German (such as between Heuss and Heuß).Template:Rp

Abolition and attempted abolitions

The Swiss and Liechtensteiners ceased to use Template:Angbr in the twentieth century. This has been explained variously by the early adoption of Roman type in Switzerland, the use of typewriters in Switzerland that omitted Template:Angbr in favor of French and Italian characters, and peculiarities of Swiss German that cause words spelled with Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr to be pronounced with gemination.Template:Rp The Education Council of Zürich had decided to stop teaching the letter in 1935, whereas the Neue Zürcher Zeitung continued to write Template:Angbr until 1971. Swiss newspapers continued to print in Fraktur until the end of the 1940s, and the abandonment of ß by most newspapers corresponded to them switching to Roman typesetting.

When the Nazi German government abolished the use of blackletter typesetting in 1941, it was originally planned to also abolish the use of Template:Angbr. However, Hitler intervened to retain Template:Angbr, while deciding against the creation of a capital form. In 1954, a group of reformers in West Germany similarly proposed, among other changes to German spelling, the abolition of Template:Angbr; their proposals were publicly opposed by German-language writers Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt and were never implemented. Although the German Orthography Reform of 1996 reduced the use of Template:Angbr in standard German, Adrienne Walder writes that an abolition outside of Switzerland appears unlikely.Template:Rp

Development of a capital form

File:Eszett Leipziger Duden 1957.png

Uppercase ß on a book cover from 1957

File:Gießener Zeitung Logo.svg

Logo of Template:Interlanguage link ("", 2008 design)

File:Straßenschild-Versal-ß.jpg

Street sign with ("") in (2011 photograph)

Because Template:Angbr had been treated as a ligature, rather than as a full letter of the German alphabet, it had no capital form in early modern typesetting. Moreover, allcaps was not normally used in Fraktur printing. There were, however, proposals to introduce capital forms of Template:Angbr for use in allcaps writing (where Template:Angbr would otherwise usually be represented as either Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr). A capital was first seriously proposed in 1879, but did not enter official or widespread use. The Orthographic Conference of 1903 called for the use of Template:Angbr in allcaps until a capital letter could be proposed. Historical typefaces offering a capitalized mostly date to the time between 1905 and 1930. The first known typefaces to include capital were produced by the foundry in Leipzig, in 1905/06. at the time widely advocated the use of this type, but its use nevertheless remained very limited.

The preface to the 1925 edition of the dictionary expressed the desirability of a separate glyph for capital Template:Angbr: Template:Quote Template:Quote

The was edited separately in East and West Germany during the 1950s to 1980s. The East German of 1957 (15th ed.) introduced a capital Template:Angbr in its typesetting without revising the rule for capitalization. The 16th edition of 1969 still announced that an uppercase Template:Angbr was in development and would be introduced in the future. The 1984 edition again removed this announcement and simply stated that there is no capital version of Template:Angbr.

In the 2000s, there were renewed efforts on the part of certain typographers to introduce a capital, Template:Angbr. A proposal to include a corresponding character in the Unicode set submitted in 2004 was rejected. A second proposal submitted in 2007 was successful, and the character was included in Unicode version 5.1.0 in April 2008 (Template:Unichar). The international standard associated with Unicode (UCS), ISO/IEC 10646, was updated to reflect the addition on 24 June 2008. The capital letter was finally adopted as an option in standard German orthography in 2017. As of 2024, Template:Angbr is now the preferred option for depicting the character in capital letters, with Template:Angbr as a second option.

Representation

Graphical variants

The recommendation of the Sulzbacher form (1903) was not followed universally in 20th-century printing. There were four distinct variants of Template:Angbr in use in Antiqua fonts:

File:Sz modern.svg

Four forms of Antiqua Eszett: 1. ſs, 2. ſs ligature, 3. ſʒ ligature, 4. Sulzbacher form

1. Template:Angbr without ligature, but as a single type, with reduced spacing between the two letters;
2. the ligature of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr inherited from the 16th-century Antiqua typefaces;
3. a ligature of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr, adapting the blackletter ligature to Antiqua; and
4. the Sulzbacher form.

The first variant (no ligature) has become practically obsolete. Most modern typefaces follow either 2 or 4, with 3 retained in occasional usage, notably in street signs in Bonn and Berlin. The design of modern Template:Angbr tends to follow either the Sulzbacher form, in which Template:Angbr (tailed z) is clearly visible, or else be made up of a clear ligature of Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr.Template:Rp

File:Ss handwritten sample.gif

Three contemporary handwritten forms of 'ß' demonstrated in the word , "(I/he/she/it) ate"

Use of typographic variants in street signs:

• Unligatured ſs variant in a street sign in Pirna, Saxony
  Unligatured ſs variant in a street sign in Pirna, Saxony
• Antiqua form of the ſʒ ligature (Berlin street signs)
  Antiqua form of the ſʒ ligature (Berlin street signs)
• Blackletter form of the ſʒ ligature (Erfurt street signs)
  Blackletter form of the ſʒ ligature (Erfurt street signs)
• Sulzbacher form (Nuremberg street signs)
  Sulzbacher form (Nuremberg street signs)
• Two distinct blackletter typefaces in Mainz. The red sign spells Script error: No such module "Lang". with ſs; the blue sign uses the standard blackletter ſʒ ligature.
  Two distinct blackletter typefaces in Mainz. The red sign spells with ſs; the blue sign uses the standard blackletter ſʒ ligature.

Screenshot of a web application with a button "SCHLIEẞEN" ("Close") using capital letters and capital ẞ. Above the button, a message says "Für Videoanrufe in Hangouts wird jetzt Google Meet verwendet. Weitere Informationen"

Capital ß in a web application

The inclusion of a capital Template:Angbr in Unicode in 2008 revived the century-old debate among typeface designers as to how such a character should be represented. The main difference in the shapes of Template:Angbr in contemporary typefaces is the depiction with a diagonal straight line vs. a curved line in its upper right part, reminiscent of the ligature of tailed z or of round s, respectively. The code chart published by the Unicode Consortium favours the former possibility, which has been adopted by Unicode capable fonts including Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Courier New, Dejavu Serif, Liberation Sans, Liberation Mono, Linux Libertine and Times New Roman; the second possibility is more rare, adopted by Dejavu Sans. Some fonts adopt a third possibility in representing Template:Angbr following the Sulzbacher form of Template:Angbr, reminiscent of the Greek Template:Angbr (beta); such a shape has been adopted by FreeSans and FreeSerif, Liberation Serif and Verdana.

Unicode

There are two code points in Unicode:

• Template:Unichar (HTML entity defined in 1995)
• Template:Unichar (introduced in 2008)

In modern browsers, lowercase "ß" will be converted to "SS" when the element containing it is set to uppercase using text-transform: uppercase in Cascading Style Sheets. The JavaScript in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox will convert "ß" to "SS" when converted to uppercase (e.g., "ß".toUpperCase()).

The lower-case letter exists in many earlier encodings that covered European languages. In several ISO 8859Template:Efn and WindowsTemplate:Efn encodings it is at Template:Tt, the value inherited by Unicode. In DOS code pagesTemplate:Efn it is at Template:Tt. Mac OS encodingsTemplate:Efn put it at Template:Tt. Some EBCDIC codesTemplate:Efn put it at Template:Tt. The upper-case form was rarely, if ever, encoded in single-byte encodings.

See also

• Long s
• Template:Annotated link