Re: German style orthography

Quoting "Pascal A. Kramm" <pkramm@...>:

> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 17:22:03 +0100, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 08:13:49 -0800, bob thornton <arcanesock@...>
> wrote:
> >> Question: How is /s/ represented in German as of now?
>
> /s/ is either represented by s (before consonants) or by ß (at the end of a
> word or compound). "ss" was originally always /ss/ (two s sounds), but since
> the German spelling got viciously raped by the "spelling reform", *some* ß
> are supposed to be written "ss" now, while only representing a single "s"
> sound.
With the slight complication that most Standardesque versions of German,
including the traditional prescriptive language ('Bühnenausprache') and the
Duden pronunciation, do not distinguish 'tween single and geminate /s/. The
"vicious rape" may have made things trickier for you - for most it is a
simplification.

(That's to say, a simplification of the actual rules; for those who've memorized
which words have 's' and which 'ß' it's of course a bother relearn.)

> >Since word-initial |s| is always /z/ in German,
>
> That's not correct. There is *no* distinction made for being word-initial.
> The distinctions made are "s before vowel" (which is always /z/), "s before
> consonant except p, t" (which is always /s/) and "s before p, t" (which is
> always /S/). All of this regardless of position in the word.
This, alas, is no longer true in the age of Neudeutsch - sufficient numbers of
speakers retain initial [s] in loans like _Sex_ ([sEks], contrasting with
_sechs_ [zEks]) that Duden recognizes it.

                                                         Andreas