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From: bergmann@leland.Stanford.EDU (Bergmann)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts,soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: Umlaute [was: naive (...question about uncial...) ]
Message-ID: <1991May20.190249.12782@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 20 May 91 19:02:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: leland.1991May20.190249.12782
References: <1991May4.190533.13629@ira.uka.de> <617@mailgzrz.tu-berlin.de> <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu>
Organization: AIR, Stanford University
Lines: 19

In article <TMB.91May20125338@volterra.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu (Thomas M. Breuel) writes:
>   [...]
>
>To add to the confusion, the official substitute for writing 'sz' when
>the special character is not available is 'ss'. As far as I can tell,
>this was a really bad decision, since 'ss' carries with it the idea
>that the preceding vowel is short, whereas 'sz' indicates that the
>preceding vowel is normal or long; there is no good reason not to
>write the 'sz' letter as 'sz' when the letter is not available.

Hoho -- strong words! I'll give you one reason which seems good
enough to me: the German "z" is pronounced "ts," so I, for one,
read "dasts" when I see "dasz."  (It's even worse with words
that are less common, e.g. "saszen.")

I'll grant you that much of this has to do with usage. Und frau
gewoehnt sich bekanntlich an allem, selbst am Dativ.

Annette