On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 12:18 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@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/.