[TUHS] Re: end-S/long-S (was: Re: GNU eqn clarifications and reforms)

[Wesley Parish <wobblygong@gmail.com>]

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wonders, the "s" has been replaced by "z" ...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@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