Как пишется эсцет в немецком

This article is about the German eszett. For the Greek letter that looks similar, see Beta. For the Chinese radical, see 阝. For the Malayalam script, see ഭ.

Not to be confused with the Latin letter B.

ẞ
ẞ ß
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Early New High German
Phonetic usage	[s]
Unicode codepoint	U+1E9E, U+00DF
History
Development	, , , ς, ζ 𐌔, 𐌆 sz ſʒ ẞ ß
Time period	~1300s to present
Descendants	None
Sisters	None
Transliteration equivalents	ss, sz
Other
Other letters commonly used with	ss, sz
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt] ess-TSET) and scharfes S (IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], «sharp S»), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs.
The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German. The character’s Unicode names in English are sharp s^[1] and eszett.^[1] The Eszett letter is used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph ⟨ss⟩, 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 German language.^[2]

The letter originates as the ⟨sz⟩ digraph as used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ (long s) and ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding ⟨ſʒ⟩.^[a] This developed from an earlier usage of ⟨z⟩ in Old and Middle High German to represent a separate sibilant sound from ⟨s⟩; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as ⟨sz⟩ in some situations.

Traditionally, ⟨ß⟩ did not have a capital form, although some type designers introduced de facto capitalized variants.
In 2017, the Council for German Orthography officially adopted a capital, ⟨ẞ⟩, into German orthography, ending a long orthographic debate.^[3]

⟨ß⟩ was encoded by ECMA-94 (1985) at position 223 (hexadecimal DF), inherited by Latin-1 and Unicode (U+00DF ß LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S).^[4]
The HTML entity ß was introduced with HTML 2.0 (1995). The capital (U+1E9E ẞ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S) was encoded by ISO 10646 in 2008.

Usage[edit]

Current usage[edit]

In standard German, three letters or combinations of letters commonly represent [s] (the voiceless alveolar fricative) depending on its position in a word: ⟨s⟩, ⟨ss⟩, and ⟨ß⟩. According to current German orthography, ⟨ß⟩ represents the sound [s]:

1. when it is written after a diphthong or long vowel and is not followed by another consonant in the word stem: Straße, Maß, groß, heißen [Exceptions: aus and words with final devoicing (e.g., Haus)];^[5] and
2. when a word stem ending with ⟨ß⟩ takes an inflectional ending beginning with a consonant: heißt, größte.^[6]

In verbs with roots where the vowel changes length, this means that some forms may be written with ⟨ß⟩, others with ⟨ss⟩: wissen, er weiß, er wusste.^[5]

The use of ⟨ß⟩ distinguishes minimal pairs such as reißen (IPA: [ˈʁaɪsn̩], to rip) and reisen (IPA: [ˈʁaɪzn̩], to travel) on the one hand ([s] vs. [z]), and Buße (IPA: [ˈbuːsə], penance) and Busse (IPA: [ˈbʊsə], buses) on the other (long vowel before ⟨ß⟩, short vowel before ⟨ss⟩).^[7]: 123

Some proper names may use ⟨ß⟩ after a short vowel, following the old orthography; this is also true of some words derived from proper names (e.g., Litfaßsäule; advertising column, named after Ernst Litfaß).^[8]: 180

In pre-1996 orthography[edit]

According to the orthography in use in German prior to the German orthography reform of 1996, ⟨ß⟩ was written to represent [s]:

1. word internally following a long vowel or diphthong: Straße, reißen; and
2. at the end of a syllable or before a consonant, so long as [s] is the end of the word stem: muß, faßt, wäßrig.^[8]: 176

In the old orthography, word stems spelled ⟨ss⟩ internally could thus be written ⟨ß⟩ in certain instances, without this reflecting a change in vowel length: küßt (from küssen), faßt (from fassen), verläßlich and Verlaß (from verlassen), kraß (comparative: krasser).^{[7]: 121–23 [9]} In rare occasions, the difference between ⟨ß⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ could help differentiate words: Paßende (expiration of a pass) and passende (appropriate).^[8]: 178

Substitution and all caps[edit]

If no ⟨ß⟩ is available, ⟨ss⟩ or ⟨sz⟩ is used instead (⟨sz⟩ especially in Hungarian-influenced eastern Austria). Until 2017, there was no official capital form of ⟨ß⟩; a capital form was nevertheless frequently used in advertising and government bureaucratic documents.^[10]: 211 In June of that year, the Council for German Orthography officially adopted a rule that ⟨ẞ⟩ would be an option for capitalizing ⟨ß⟩ besides the previous capitalization as ⟨SS⟩ (i.e., variants STRASSE and STRAẞE would be accepted as equally valid).^[11]
[12] Prior to this time, it was recommended to render ⟨ß⟩ as ⟨SS⟩ in allcaps except when there was ambiguity, in which case it should be rendered as ⟨SZ⟩. The common example for such a case was IN MASZEN (in Maßen «in moderate amounts») vs. IN MASSEN (in Massen «in massive amounts»), where the difference between the spelling in ⟨ß⟩ vs. ⟨ss⟩ could actually reverse the conveyed meaning.^{[citation needed]}

Switzerland and Liechtenstein[edit]

In Swiss Standard German, ⟨ss⟩ usually replaces every ⟨ß⟩.^[13][14] This is officially sanctioned by the reformed German orthography rules, which state in §25 E2: «In der Schweiz kann man immer „ss“ schreiben» («In Switzerland, one may always write ‘ss'»). Liechtenstein follows the same practice. There are very few instances where the difference between spelling ⟨ß⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ affects the meaning of a word, and these can usually be told apart by context.^{[10]: 230 [15]}

Other uses[edit]

Occasionally, ⟨ß⟩ has been used in unusual ways:

• As a surrogate for Greek lowercase ⟨β⟩ (beta), which looks fairly similar. This was used in older operating systems, the character encoding of which (notably Latin-1 and Windows-1252) did not support easy use of Greek letters. Additionally, the original IBM DOS code page, CP437 (aka OEM-US) conflates the two characters, with a glyph that minimizes their differences placed between the Greek letters ⟨α⟩ (alpha) and ⟨γ⟩ (gamma) but named «Sharp s Small».^[16]
• In Prussian Lithuanian, as in the first book published in Lithuanian, Martynas Mažvydas’ Simple Words of Catechism,^[17] as well as in Sorbian (see example on the left).
• For sadhe in Akkadian glosses, in place of the standard ⟨ṣ⟩, when that character is unavailable due to limitations of HTML.^[18]
• The letter appeared in the alphabet made by Jan Kochanowski for Polish language, that was used from 16th until 18th century. It represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative ([ʃ]) sound.^[19][20] It was for example used in Jakub Wujek Bible.^[21]

History[edit]

Origin and development[edit]

As a result of the High German consonant shift, Old High German developed a sound generally spelled ⟨zz⟩ or ⟨z⟩ that was probably pronounced [s] and was contrasted with a sound, probably pronounced [⁠s̠] (voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant) or [z̠] (voiced alveolar retracted sibilant), depending on the place in the word, and spelled ⟨s⟩.^[22] Given that ⟨z⟩ could also represent the affricate [ts], some attempts were made to differentiate the sounds by spelling [s] as ⟨zss⟩ or ⟨zs⟩: wazssar (German: Wasser), fuozssi (German: Füße), heizsit (German: heißt).^[23] In Middle High German, ⟨zz⟩ simplified to ⟨z⟩ at the end of a word or after a long vowel, but was retained word internally after a short vowel: wazzer (German: Wasser) vs. lâzen (German: lassen) and fuoz (German: Fuß).^[24]

In the thirteenth century, the phonetic difference between ⟨z⟩ and ⟨s⟩ was lost at the beginning and end of words in all dialects except for Gottscheerish.^[22] Word-internally, Old and Middle High German ⟨s⟩ came to be pronounced [z] (the voiced alveolar sibilant), while Old and Middle High German ⟨z⟩ continued to be pronounced [s]. This produces the contrast between modern standard German reisen and reißen. The former is pronounced IPA: [ˈʁaɪzn̩] and comes from Middle High German: reisen, while the latter is pronounced IPA: [ˈʁaɪsn̩] and comes from Middle High German: reizen.^[25]

In the late medieval and early modern periods, [s] was frequently spelled ⟨sz⟩ or ⟨ss⟩. The earliest appearance of ligature resembling the modern ⟨ß⟩ is in a fragment of a manuscript of the poem Wolfdietrich from around 1300.^{[10]: 214 [25]} In the Gothic book hands and bastarda scripts of the late medieval period, ⟨sz⟩ is written with long s and the Blackletter «tailed z», as ⟨ſʒ⟩. A recognizable ligature representing the ⟨sz⟩ digraph develops in handwriting in the early 14th century.^{[26]: 67–76}

By the late 1400s, the choice of spelling between ⟨sz⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ was usually based on the sound’s position in the word rather than etymology: ⟨sz⟩ (⟨ſz⟩) tended to be used in word final position: uſz (Middle High German: ûz, German: aus), -nüſz (Middle High German: -nüss(e), German: -nis); ⟨ss⟩ (⟨ſſ⟩) tended to be used when the sound occurred between vowels: groſſes (Middle High German: grôzes, German: großes).^[27]: 171 While Martin Luther’s early 16th-century printings also contain spellings such as heyße (German: heiße), early modern printers mostly changed these to ⟨ſſ⟩: heiſſe. Around the same time, printers began to systematically distinguish between das (the, that [pronoun]) and daß (that [conjunction]).^[27]: 215

In modern German, the Old and Middle High German ⟨z⟩ is now represented by either ⟨ss⟩, ⟨ß⟩, or, if there are no related forms in which [s] occurs intervocalically, with ⟨s⟩: messen (Middle High German: mezzen), Straße (Middle High German: strâze), and was (Middle High German: waz).^[24]

Standardization of use[edit]

The pre-1996 German use of ⟨ß⟩ 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 ⟨ß⟩ was modeled after the use of long and «round»-s in Fraktur. ⟨ß⟩ 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.^{[10]: 217–18} In his Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854) Jacob Grimm called for ⟨ß⟩ or ⟨sz⟩ to be written for all instances of Middle and Old High German etymological ⟨z⟩ (e.g., eß instead of es from Middle High German: ez); however, his etymological proposal could not overcome established usage.^[27]: 269

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 ⟨ß⟩ was only used after long vowels.^[10]: 219

Use in Roman type[edit]

Although there are early examples in Roman type (called Antiqua in a German context) of a ⟨ſs⟩-ligature that looks like the letter ⟨ß⟩, it was not commonly used for ⟨sz⟩.^[28][29] These forms generally fell out of use in the eighteenth century and were used in Italic text only;^[26]: 73 German works printed in Roman type in the late 18th and early 19th centuries such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre did not provide any equivalent to the ⟨ß⟩. Jacob Grimm began using ⟨ß⟩ in his Deutsche Grammatik (1819), however it varied with ⟨ſſ⟩ word internally.^[26]: 74 Grimm eventually rejected the use of the character; in their Deutsches Wörterbuch (1838), the Brothers Grimm favored writing it as ⟨sz⟩.^[29]: 2 The First Orthographic Conference in Berlin (1876) recommended that ß be represented as ⟨ſs⟩ — however, both suggestions were ultimately rejected.^{[27]: 269 [10]: 222} 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.^{[29]: 3–5}

Until the abolition of Fraktur in 1941, it was nevertheless common for family names to be written with ⟨ß⟩ in Fraktur and ⟨ss⟩ in Roman type. The formal abolition resulted in inconsistencies in how names such as Heuss/Heuß are written in modern German.^[8]: 176

Abolition and attempted abolitions[edit]

The Swiss and Liechtensteiners ceased to use ⟨ß⟩ 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 did not include ⟨ß⟩ in favor of French and Italian characters, and peculiarities of Swiss German that cause words spelled with ⟨ß⟩ or ⟨ss⟩ to be pronounced with gemination.^{[10]: 221–22} The Education Council of Zurich had decided to stop teaching the letter in 1935, whereas the Neue Zürcher Zeitung continued to write ⟨ß⟩ until 1971.^[30] 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.^[31]

When the Nazi German government abolished the use of blackletter typesetting in 1941, it was originally planned to also abolish the use of ⟨ß⟩. However, Hitler intervened to retain ⟨ß⟩, while deciding against the creation of a capital form.^[32] In 1954, a group of reformers in West Germany similarly proposed, among other changes to German spelling, the abolition of ⟨ß⟩; their proposals were publicly opposed by German-language writers Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt and were never implemented.^[33] Although the German Orthography Reform of 1996 reduced the use of ⟨ß⟩ in standard German, Adrienne Walder writes that an abolition outside of Switzerland appears unlikely.^[10]: 235

Development of a capital form[edit]

Because ⟨ß⟩ 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. There were, however, proposals to introduce capital forms of ⟨ß⟩ for use in allcaps writing (where ⟨ß⟩ would otherwise usually be represented as either ⟨SS⟩ or ⟨SZ⟩). A capital was first seriously proposed in 1879, but did not enter official or widespread use.^[34] Historical typefaces offering a capitalized eszett mostly date to the time between 1905 and 1930. The first known typefaces to include capital eszett were produced by the Schelter & Giesecke foundry in Leipzig, in 1905/06. Schelter & Giesecke 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 Duden dictionary expressed the desirability of a separate glyph for capital ⟨ß⟩:

Die Verwendung zweier Buchstaben für einen Laut ist nur ein Notbehelf, der aufhören muss, sobald ein geeigneter Druckbuchstabe für das große ß geschaffen ist.^[35]

The use of two letters for a single phoneme is makeshift, to be abandoned as soon as a suitable type for the capital ß has been developed.

The Duden was edited separately in East and West Germany during the 1950s to 1980s. The East German Duden of 1957 (15th ed.) introduced a capital ⟨ß⟩, in its typesetting without revising the rule for capitalization. The 16th edition of 1969 still announced that an uppercase ⟨ß⟩ 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 ⟨ß⟩.^[36]

In the 2000s, there were renewed efforts on the part of certain typographers to introduce a capital, ⟨ẞ⟩. A proposal to include a corresponding character in the Unicode set submitted in 2004^[37] was rejected.^[38][39] A second proposal submitted in 2007 was successful, and the character was included in Unicode version 5.1.0 in April 2008 (U+1E9E ẞ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S).^[40] The international standard associated with Unicode (UCS), ISO/IEC 10646, was updated to reflect the addition on 24 June 2008. The capital was finally adopted as an option in standard German orthography in 2017.^[12]

Representation[edit]

Graphical variants[edit]

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

1. ⟨ſs⟩ without ligature, but as a single type, with reduced spacing between the two letters;
2. the ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ and ⟨s⟩ inherited from the 16th-century Antiqua typefaces;
3. a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ and ⟨ʒ⟩, 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 ⟨ß⟩ tends to follow either the Sulzbacher form, in which ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) is clearly visible, or else be made up of a clear ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ and ⟨s⟩.^[29]: 2

Use of typographic variants in street signs:

• 

  Two distinct blackletter typefaces in Mainz. The red sign spells Straße with ſs; the blue sign uses the standard blackletter ſʒ ligature.

• 

  Sulzbacher form in the German Einbahnstraße («one-way street») sign

The inclusion of a capital ⟨ẞ⟩ in ISO 10646 in 2008 revived the century-old debate among font designers as to how such a character should be represented. The main difference in the shapes of ⟨ẞ⟩ in contemporary fonts 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,^[41] 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 ⟨ẞ⟩ following the Sulzbacher form of ⟨ß⟩, reminiscent of the Greek ⟨β⟩ (beta); such a shape has been adopted by FreeSans and FreeSerif, Liberation Serif and Verdana.^[42]

Keyboards and encoding[edit]

In Germany and Austria, a ‘ß’ key is present on computer and typewriter keyboards, normally to the right-hand end on the number row.
The German typewriter keyboard layout was defined in DIN 2112, first issued in 1928.^[43]

In other countries, the letter is not marked on the keyboard, but a combination of other keys can produce it. Often, the letter is input using a modifier and the ‘s’ key. The details of the keyboard layout depend on the input language and operating system: on some keyboards with US-International (or local ‘extended’) setting, the symbol is created using AltGrs (or CtrlAlts) in Microsoft Windows, Linux and ChromeOS; in MacOS, one uses ⌥ Options on the US, US-Extended, and UK keyboards. In Windows, one can use Alt+0223. On Linux Composess works, and ComposeSS for uppercase.

Some modern virtual keyboards show ß when the user presses and holds the ‘s’ key.

The HTML entity for ⟨ß⟩ is ß. Its code point in the ISO 8859 character encoding versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and identically in Unicode is 223, or DF in hexadecimal. In TeX and LaTeX, ss produces ß. A German language support package for LaTeX exists in which ß is produced by "s (similar to umlauts, which are produced by "a, "o, and "u with this package).^[44]

In modern browsers, «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()).^{[citation needed]}

Character information

Preview	ẞ	ß
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S	LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	7838	U+1E9E	223	U+00DF
UTF-8	225 186 158	E1 BA 9E	195 159	C3 9F
Numeric character reference	ẞ	ẞ	ß	ß
Named character reference		ß
ISO 8859[b] and Windows-125x[c]			223	DF
Mac OS script encodings[d]			167	A7
DOS code page 437,[69] 850[70]			225	E1
EUC-KR[71] / UHC[72]			169 172	A9 AC
GB 18030[73]	129 53 254 50	81 35 FE 32	129 48 137 56	81 30 89 38
EBCDIC 037,[74] 500,[75] 1026[76]			89	59
ISO/IEC 6937			251	FB
Shift JIS-2004[77]			133 116	85 74
EUC-JIS-2004[78]			169 213	A9 D5
KPS 9566-2003[79]			174 223	AE DF
LaTeX[80]	[e]	ss

See also[edit]

• long s
• β – Second letter of the Greek alphabet
• 阝 – Element used in Chinese Kangxi writing
• Sz – Digraph of the Latin script

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

This article is about the German eszett. For the Greek letter that looks similar, see Beta. For the Chinese radical, see 阝. For the Malayalam script, see ഭ.

Not to be confused with the Latin letter B.

ẞ
ẞ ß
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Early New High German
Phonetic usage	[s]
Unicode codepoint	U+1E9E, U+00DF
History
Development	, , , ς, ζ 𐌔, 𐌆 sz ſʒ ẞ ß
Time period	~1300s to present
Descendants	None
Sisters	None
Transliteration equivalents	ss, sz
Other
Other letters commonly used with	ss, sz
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt] ess-TSET) and scharfes S (IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], «sharp S»), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs.
The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German. The character’s Unicode names in English are sharp s^[1] and eszett.^[1] The Eszett letter is used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph ⟨ss⟩, 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 German language.^[2]

The letter originates as the ⟨sz⟩ digraph as used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ (long s) and ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding ⟨ſʒ⟩.^[a] This developed from an earlier usage of ⟨z⟩ in Old and Middle High German to represent a separate sibilant sound from ⟨s⟩; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as ⟨sz⟩ in some situations.

Traditionally, ⟨ß⟩ did not have a capital form, although some type designers introduced de facto capitalized variants.
In 2017, the Council for German Orthography officially adopted a capital, ⟨ẞ⟩, into German orthography, ending a long orthographic debate.^[3]

⟨ß⟩ was encoded by ECMA-94 (1985) at position 223 (hexadecimal DF), inherited by Latin-1 and Unicode (U+00DF ß LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S).^[4]
The HTML entity ß was introduced with HTML 2.0 (1995). The capital (U+1E9E ẞ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S) was encoded by ISO 10646 in 2008.

Usage[edit]

Current usage[edit]

In standard German, three letters or combinations of letters commonly represent [s] (the voiceless alveolar fricative) depending on its position in a word: ⟨s⟩, ⟨ss⟩, and ⟨ß⟩. According to current German orthography, ⟨ß⟩ represents the sound [s]:

1. when it is written after a diphthong or long vowel and is not followed by another consonant in the word stem: Straße, Maß, groß, heißen [Exceptions: aus and words with final devoicing (e.g., Haus)];^[5] and
2. when a word stem ending with ⟨ß⟩ takes an inflectional ending beginning with a consonant: heißt, größte.^[6]

In verbs with roots where the vowel changes length, this means that some forms may be written with ⟨ß⟩, others with ⟨ss⟩: wissen, er weiß, er wusste.^[5]

The use of ⟨ß⟩ distinguishes minimal pairs such as reißen (IPA: [ˈʁaɪsn̩], to rip) and reisen (IPA: [ˈʁaɪzn̩], to travel) on the one hand ([s] vs. [z]), and Buße (IPA: [ˈbuːsə], penance) and Busse (IPA: [ˈbʊsə], buses) on the other (long vowel before ⟨ß⟩, short vowel before ⟨ss⟩).^[7]: 123

Some proper names may use ⟨ß⟩ after a short vowel, following the old orthography; this is also true of some words derived from proper names (e.g., Litfaßsäule; advertising column, named after Ernst Litfaß).^[8]: 180

In pre-1996 orthography[edit]

According to the orthography in use in German prior to the German orthography reform of 1996, ⟨ß⟩ was written to represent [s]:

1. word internally following a long vowel or diphthong: Straße, reißen; and
2. at the end of a syllable or before a consonant, so long as [s] is the end of the word stem: muß, faßt, wäßrig.^[8]: 176

In the old orthography, word stems spelled ⟨ss⟩ internally could thus be written ⟨ß⟩ in certain instances, without this reflecting a change in vowel length: küßt (from küssen), faßt (from fassen), verläßlich and Verlaß (from verlassen), kraß (comparative: krasser).^{[7]: 121–23 [9]} In rare occasions, the difference between ⟨ß⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ could help differentiate words: Paßende (expiration of a pass) and passende (appropriate).^[8]: 178

Substitution and all caps[edit]

If no ⟨ß⟩ is available, ⟨ss⟩ or ⟨sz⟩ is used instead (⟨sz⟩ especially in Hungarian-influenced eastern Austria). Until 2017, there was no official capital form of ⟨ß⟩; a capital form was nevertheless frequently used in advertising and government bureaucratic documents.^[10]: 211 In June of that year, the Council for German Orthography officially adopted a rule that ⟨ẞ⟩ would be an option for capitalizing ⟨ß⟩ besides the previous capitalization as ⟨SS⟩ (i.e., variants STRASSE and STRAẞE would be accepted as equally valid).^[11]
[12] Prior to this time, it was recommended to render ⟨ß⟩ as ⟨SS⟩ in allcaps except when there was ambiguity, in which case it should be rendered as ⟨SZ⟩. The common example for such a case was IN MASZEN (in Maßen «in moderate amounts») vs. IN MASSEN (in Massen «in massive amounts»), where the difference between the spelling in ⟨ß⟩ vs. ⟨ss⟩ could actually reverse the conveyed meaning.^{[citation needed]}

Switzerland and Liechtenstein[edit]

In Swiss Standard German, ⟨ss⟩ usually replaces every ⟨ß⟩.^[13][14] This is officially sanctioned by the reformed German orthography rules, which state in §25 E2: «In der Schweiz kann man immer „ss“ schreiben» («In Switzerland, one may always write ‘ss'»). Liechtenstein follows the same practice. There are very few instances where the difference between spelling ⟨ß⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ affects the meaning of a word, and these can usually be told apart by context.^{[10]: 230 [15]}

Other uses[edit]

Occasionally, ⟨ß⟩ has been used in unusual ways:

• As a surrogate for Greek lowercase ⟨β⟩ (beta), which looks fairly similar. This was used in older operating systems, the character encoding of which (notably Latin-1 and Windows-1252) did not support easy use of Greek letters. Additionally, the original IBM DOS code page, CP437 (aka OEM-US) conflates the two characters, with a glyph that minimizes their differences placed between the Greek letters ⟨α⟩ (alpha) and ⟨γ⟩ (gamma) but named «Sharp s Small».^[16]
• In Prussian Lithuanian, as in the first book published in Lithuanian, Martynas Mažvydas’ Simple Words of Catechism,^[17] as well as in Sorbian (see example on the left).
• For sadhe in Akkadian glosses, in place of the standard ⟨ṣ⟩, when that character is unavailable due to limitations of HTML.^[18]
• The letter appeared in the alphabet made by Jan Kochanowski for Polish language, that was used from 16th until 18th century. It represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative ([ʃ]) sound.^[19][20] It was for example used in Jakub Wujek Bible.^[21]

History[edit]

Origin and development[edit]

As a result of the High German consonant shift, Old High German developed a sound generally spelled ⟨zz⟩ or ⟨z⟩ that was probably pronounced [s] and was contrasted with a sound, probably pronounced [⁠s̠] (voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant) or [z̠] (voiced alveolar retracted sibilant), depending on the place in the word, and spelled ⟨s⟩.^[22] Given that ⟨z⟩ could also represent the affricate [ts], some attempts were made to differentiate the sounds by spelling [s] as ⟨zss⟩ or ⟨zs⟩: wazssar (German: Wasser), fuozssi (German: Füße), heizsit (German: heißt).^[23] In Middle High German, ⟨zz⟩ simplified to ⟨z⟩ at the end of a word or after a long vowel, but was retained word internally after a short vowel: wazzer (German: Wasser) vs. lâzen (German: lassen) and fuoz (German: Fuß).^[24]

In the thirteenth century, the phonetic difference between ⟨z⟩ and ⟨s⟩ was lost at the beginning and end of words in all dialects except for Gottscheerish.^[22] Word-internally, Old and Middle High German ⟨s⟩ came to be pronounced [z] (the voiced alveolar sibilant), while Old and Middle High German ⟨z⟩ continued to be pronounced [s]. This produces the contrast between modern standard German reisen and reißen. The former is pronounced IPA: [ˈʁaɪzn̩] and comes from Middle High German: reisen, while the latter is pronounced IPA: [ˈʁaɪsn̩] and comes from Middle High German: reizen.^[25]

In the late medieval and early modern periods, [s] was frequently spelled ⟨sz⟩ or ⟨ss⟩. The earliest appearance of ligature resembling the modern ⟨ß⟩ is in a fragment of a manuscript of the poem Wolfdietrich from around 1300.^{[10]: 214 [25]} In the Gothic book hands and bastarda scripts of the late medieval period, ⟨sz⟩ is written with long s and the Blackletter «tailed z», as ⟨ſʒ⟩. A recognizable ligature representing the ⟨sz⟩ digraph develops in handwriting in the early 14th century.^{[26]: 67–76}

By the late 1400s, the choice of spelling between ⟨sz⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ was usually based on the sound’s position in the word rather than etymology: ⟨sz⟩ (⟨ſz⟩) tended to be used in word final position: uſz (Middle High German: ûz, German: aus), -nüſz (Middle High German: -nüss(e), German: -nis); ⟨ss⟩ (⟨ſſ⟩) tended to be used when the sound occurred between vowels: groſſes (Middle High German: grôzes, German: großes).^[27]: 171 While Martin Luther’s early 16th-century printings also contain spellings such as heyße (German: heiße), early modern printers mostly changed these to ⟨ſſ⟩: heiſſe. Around the same time, printers began to systematically distinguish between das (the, that [pronoun]) and daß (that [conjunction]).^[27]: 215

In modern German, the Old and Middle High German ⟨z⟩ is now represented by either ⟨ss⟩, ⟨ß⟩, or, if there are no related forms in which [s] occurs intervocalically, with ⟨s⟩: messen (Middle High German: mezzen), Straße (Middle High German: strâze), and was (Middle High German: waz).^[24]

Standardization of use[edit]

The pre-1996 German use of ⟨ß⟩ 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 ⟨ß⟩ was modeled after the use of long and «round»-s in Fraktur. ⟨ß⟩ 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.^{[10]: 217–18} In his Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854) Jacob Grimm called for ⟨ß⟩ or ⟨sz⟩ to be written for all instances of Middle and Old High German etymological ⟨z⟩ (e.g., eß instead of es from Middle High German: ez); however, his etymological proposal could not overcome established usage.^[27]: 269

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 ⟨ß⟩ was only used after long vowels.^[10]: 219

Use in Roman type[edit]

Although there are early examples in Roman type (called Antiqua in a German context) of a ⟨ſs⟩-ligature that looks like the letter ⟨ß⟩, it was not commonly used for ⟨sz⟩.^[28][29] These forms generally fell out of use in the eighteenth century and were used in Italic text only;^[26]: 73 German works printed in Roman type in the late 18th and early 19th centuries such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre did not provide any equivalent to the ⟨ß⟩. Jacob Grimm began using ⟨ß⟩ in his Deutsche Grammatik (1819), however it varied with ⟨ſſ⟩ word internally.^[26]: 74 Grimm eventually rejected the use of the character; in their Deutsches Wörterbuch (1838), the Brothers Grimm favored writing it as ⟨sz⟩.^[29]: 2 The First Orthographic Conference in Berlin (1876) recommended that ß be represented as ⟨ſs⟩ — however, both suggestions were ultimately rejected.^{[27]: 269 [10]: 222} 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.^{[29]: 3–5}

Until the abolition of Fraktur in 1941, it was nevertheless common for family names to be written with ⟨ß⟩ in Fraktur and ⟨ss⟩ in Roman type. The formal abolition resulted in inconsistencies in how names such as Heuss/Heuß are written in modern German.^[8]: 176

Abolition and attempted abolitions[edit]

The Swiss and Liechtensteiners ceased to use ⟨ß⟩ 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 did not include ⟨ß⟩ in favor of French and Italian characters, and peculiarities of Swiss German that cause words spelled with ⟨ß⟩ or ⟨ss⟩ to be pronounced with gemination.^{[10]: 221–22} The Education Council of Zurich had decided to stop teaching the letter in 1935, whereas the Neue Zürcher Zeitung continued to write ⟨ß⟩ until 1971.^[30] 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.^[31]

When the Nazi German government abolished the use of blackletter typesetting in 1941, it was originally planned to also abolish the use of ⟨ß⟩. However, Hitler intervened to retain ⟨ß⟩, while deciding against the creation of a capital form.^[32] In 1954, a group of reformers in West Germany similarly proposed, among other changes to German spelling, the abolition of ⟨ß⟩; their proposals were publicly opposed by German-language writers Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt and were never implemented.^[33] Although the German Orthography Reform of 1996 reduced the use of ⟨ß⟩ in standard German, Adrienne Walder writes that an abolition outside of Switzerland appears unlikely.^[10]: 235

Development of a capital form[edit]

Because ⟨ß⟩ 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. There were, however, proposals to introduce capital forms of ⟨ß⟩ for use in allcaps writing (where ⟨ß⟩ would otherwise usually be represented as either ⟨SS⟩ or ⟨SZ⟩). A capital was first seriously proposed in 1879, but did not enter official or widespread use.^[34] Historical typefaces offering a capitalized eszett mostly date to the time between 1905 and 1930. The first known typefaces to include capital eszett were produced by the Schelter & Giesecke foundry in Leipzig, in 1905/06. Schelter & Giesecke 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 Duden dictionary expressed the desirability of a separate glyph for capital ⟨ß⟩:

Die Verwendung zweier Buchstaben für einen Laut ist nur ein Notbehelf, der aufhören muss, sobald ein geeigneter Druckbuchstabe für das große ß geschaffen ist.^[35]

The use of two letters for a single phoneme is makeshift, to be abandoned as soon as a suitable type for the capital ß has been developed.

The Duden was edited separately in East and West Germany during the 1950s to 1980s. The East German Duden of 1957 (15th ed.) introduced a capital ⟨ß⟩, in its typesetting without revising the rule for capitalization. The 16th edition of 1969 still announced that an uppercase ⟨ß⟩ 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 ⟨ß⟩.^[36]

In the 2000s, there were renewed efforts on the part of certain typographers to introduce a capital, ⟨ẞ⟩. A proposal to include a corresponding character in the Unicode set submitted in 2004^[37] was rejected.^[38][39] A second proposal submitted in 2007 was successful, and the character was included in Unicode version 5.1.0 in April 2008 (U+1E9E ẞ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S).^[40] The international standard associated with Unicode (UCS), ISO/IEC 10646, was updated to reflect the addition on 24 June 2008. The capital was finally adopted as an option in standard German orthography in 2017.^[12]

Representation[edit]

Graphical variants[edit]

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

1. ⟨ſs⟩ without ligature, but as a single type, with reduced spacing between the two letters;
2. the ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ and ⟨s⟩ inherited from the 16th-century Antiqua typefaces;
3. a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ and ⟨ʒ⟩, 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 ⟨ß⟩ tends to follow either the Sulzbacher form, in which ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) is clearly visible, or else be made up of a clear ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ and ⟨s⟩.^[29]: 2

Use of typographic variants in street signs:

• 

  Two distinct blackletter typefaces in Mainz. The red sign spells Straße with ſs; the blue sign uses the standard blackletter ſʒ ligature.

• 

  Sulzbacher form in the German Einbahnstraße («one-way street») sign

The inclusion of a capital ⟨ẞ⟩ in ISO 10646 in 2008 revived the century-old debate among font designers as to how such a character should be represented. The main difference in the shapes of ⟨ẞ⟩ in contemporary fonts 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,^[41] 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 ⟨ẞ⟩ following the Sulzbacher form of ⟨ß⟩, reminiscent of the Greek ⟨β⟩ (beta); such a shape has been adopted by FreeSans and FreeSerif, Liberation Serif and Verdana.^[42]

Keyboards and encoding[edit]

In Germany and Austria, a ‘ß’ key is present on computer and typewriter keyboards, normally to the right-hand end on the number row.
The German typewriter keyboard layout was defined in DIN 2112, first issued in 1928.^[43]

In other countries, the letter is not marked on the keyboard, but a combination of other keys can produce it. Often, the letter is input using a modifier and the ‘s’ key. The details of the keyboard layout depend on the input language and operating system: on some keyboards with US-International (or local ‘extended’) setting, the symbol is created using AltGrs (or CtrlAlts) in Microsoft Windows, Linux and ChromeOS; in MacOS, one uses ⌥ Options on the US, US-Extended, and UK keyboards. In Windows, one can use Alt+0223. On Linux Composess works, and ComposeSS for uppercase.

Some modern virtual keyboards show ß when the user presses and holds the ‘s’ key.

The HTML entity for ⟨ß⟩ is ß. Its code point in the ISO 8859 character encoding versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and identically in Unicode is 223, or DF in hexadecimal. In TeX and LaTeX, ss produces ß. A German language support package for LaTeX exists in which ß is produced by "s (similar to umlauts, which are produced by "a, "o, and "u with this package).^[44]

In modern browsers, «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()).^{[citation needed]}

Character information

Preview	ẞ	ß
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S	LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	7838	U+1E9E	223	U+00DF
UTF-8	225 186 158	E1 BA 9E	195 159	C3 9F
Numeric character reference	ẞ	ẞ	ß	ß
Named character reference		ß
ISO 8859[b] and Windows-125x[c]			223	DF
Mac OS script encodings[d]			167	A7
DOS code page 437,[69] 850[70]			225	E1
EUC-KR[71] / UHC[72]			169 172	A9 AC
GB 18030[73]	129 53 254 50	81 35 FE 32	129 48 137 56	81 30 89 38
EBCDIC 037,[74] 500,[75] 1026[76]			89	59
ISO/IEC 6937			251	FB
Shift JIS-2004[77]			133 116	85 74
EUC-JIS-2004[78]			169 213	A9 D5
KPS 9566-2003[79]			174 223	AE DF
LaTeX[80]	[e]	ss

See also[edit]

• long s
• β – Second letter of the Greek alphabet
• 阝 – Element used in Chinese Kangxi writing
• Sz – Digraph of the Latin script

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Фото: Auf Deutsch

Как известно, в немецком языке есть 4 особых символа: три умлаута и странная буква, похожая на латинскую бета. В этой статье речь пойдёт как раз о ней. Встречайте: ß, эсцет, «scharfes S»!

ẞ в немецком: как называется?

У немецкой ẞ масса названий. Самое известное и популярное — эсцет (Eszett). Среди обозначений также можно встретить:

• Scharfes S («острая S»)
• Doppel-S («двойная S»)
• Buckel-S («горбатая S»)
• Rucksack-S («S с рюкзаком»)
• Фигурная S

ẞ в немецком алфавите: буква или нет?

Если посмотреть на этот вопрос под прямым углом, то с чего бы нам не включать эсцет в немецкий алфавит? Ну буква же! У лингвистов, правда, другое мнение. Дискуссии о том, стоит ли учитывать ẞ, ведутся аж с конца 19 века.

Эсцет в немецком – буква с историей. В общем и целом – это всего лишь лигатура, объединение двух символов – ſ (долгого S) и Z. Уже просматриваются очертания ẞ, да? Кстати, так как оба «родителя» согласные, эсцет тоже является согласной буквой.

К тому же, несмотря на то, что ẞ используется только в немецком языке, некоторые немецкоязычные страны всё же решились отказаться от неё. Среди них Швейцария и Лихтенштейн: здесь эсцет просто заменили на «ss».

Как читается ẞ (эсцет) в немецком?

В немецком алфавите ß так и читается:

Буква	Немецкая транскрипция	Русская транскрипция
ẞ, ß	[ɛs’t͡sɛt]	[эсцет]

В словах эсцет читается как обычная S – [с]:

Слово	Немецкая транскрипция	Русская транскрипция
Fuß (стопа)	[fu:s]	[фу:с]
beißen (кусать)	[ˈbaɪ̯sn̩]	[ˈбайсн]
mäßig (умеренный)	[ˈmɛːsɪç]	[ˈмэːсихь]

Можно ли не использовать эсцет?

Зависит от того, с какой немецкоязычной страной вы взаимодействуете или собираетесь это делать. Так жителям Швейцарии и Лихтенштейна использование ẞ может показаться устаревшим, тогда как отказ от использования ẞ в Германии охарактеризует вас как носителя швейцарской версии языка. Общаясь с немцами онлайн и не имея под рукой немецкой раскладки эсцет можно спокойно заменять на «ss». В официальных документах и письмах лучше придерживаться правил страны обращения.

Буква, которая есть только в немецком языке

Отличительной особенностью немецкого языка является буква, или вернее знак — ß  (эсцет или s острое). В настоящее время она используется только в немецком языке. В чем ее уникальность? Чем ß эсцет отличается от ss: произношением или употреблением на письме? 

Для начала давайте разберемся, что такое ß  (эсцет). В общем и целом – это всего лишь лигатура, которая представляет собой объединение двух символов – ſ (долгого S) и Z. Если внимательно присмотреться, то можно увидеть это объединение в очертании ß. Так как оба прародителя эсцета — согласные, то его тоже относят к согласным. Данная буква не входит в алфавит немецкого языка, но все равно имеет место быть в нем и употребляться на письме.

Как пишется эсцет: 1 — объединение долгой S и S (не лигатура); 2 — эсцет-лигатура из долгой S и S; 3 — эсцет-лигатура из долгой S и Z; 4 — современная лигатура, похожая на латинскую бета.

эсцета

Специфика использования эсцета в немецкоязычных странах

эсцета

Эсцет используется не во всех немецкоязычных странах. В Швейцарии s острое во всех случаях заменяют сочетанием ss. От редкой буквы швейцарцы стали избавляться в начале ХХ века. Одна из причин — распространение печатных машинок. В Швейцарии, где помимо немецкого языка государственными были еще французский с итальянским, на печатных машинках требовалось освободить место для знаков «ç», «à», «é» и «è». Последней от эсцет отказалась влиятельная швейцарская газета «Neue Zuercher Zeitung». В издании этот знак использовали вплоть до 1974 года. Но “смерть” знака ß все-таки наступила в Швейцарии и произошло это по естественным причинам.

На современном этапе ß (эсцет) довольно часто встречается в написании многих немецких слов: без нее не получится написать groß — большой или heißen — называться.

эсцет

Как правильно использовать эсцет на письме?

эсцет

Не только люди, которые изучают немецкий язык, но и коренные немцы, путаются при выборе ss и ß на письме. Происходит это по нескольким причинам. Одна из них — реформа правописания, результатом которой стало ограниченное использование буквы ß.

Также важно помнить, что буква ß в немецком соответствует двойной букве ss, однако правила немецкой орфографии различают употребление ß и ss на письме.

Правила правильного написание буквы ß и ss:

1. После кратких гласных a, u, e, а также в конце слова пишется ss:

der Pass — паспорт;

der Stress — стресс;

Russland — Россия;

russisch — русский;

das Wasser — вода;

essen — есть, принимать пищу;

das Schloss — замок;

dass — что, чтобы (союз);

verbessern — улучшать;

2. После долгих гласных зачастую пишется ß (эсцет):

grüßen (произношение) — приветствовать;

groß — большой;

die Straße — улица;

süß — сладкий;

der Fußball — футбол;

der Fuß — нога;

der Fußgänger — пешеход;

aß — ел, принимал пищу;

der Spaß — удовольствие;

die Maß — размер, мера;

die Maßnahme — мероприятие, действие;

abstoßend — отвратительный;

heißen (произношение) — называться;

draußen — снаружи;

der Blumenstrauß — букет;

schließlich — наконец, в конце концов;

schließen — закрывать;

außerdem — кроме того;

die Äußerung — признание, замечание;

Blumen gießen — поливать цветы;

4. В написание слов ЗАГЛАВНЫМИ БУКВАМИ ß почти всегда заменяется на SS.

Примеры:

SCHLIESSEN SIE DIE TÜR, BITTE! — Закрывайте дверь, пожалуйста!

ACHTUNG! FUSSGÄNGER, ÜBERQUEREN SIE HIER DIE STRASSE NICHT. — Внимание! Пешеходы, не переходите здесь дорогу!

эсцет

эсцет

эсцет

эсцет

• Предлоги места в немецком языке
• Определить род существительного в немецком легко: секреты использования der, die, das
• Немецкие существительные пишутся только с большой буквы: разбираемся почему?
• Немецкий алфавит с транскрипцией
• Склонение местоимений в немецком

Немецкая лигатура ß (эс-цет)
Латинский алфавит
A	B	C	D	E	F	G
H	I	J	K	L	M	N
O	P	Q	R	S	T	U
V	W	X	Y	Z
Дополнительные и вариантные знаки
À	Á	Â	Ã	Ä	Å	Æ
Ā	Ă	Ȃ	Ą	Ȧ	Ả	Ɐ
Ɑ	Ɓ	Ƀ	Ç	Ć	Ĉ	Ċ
Č	Ȼ	Ƈ	Ð,ð	Ď,ď	Đ,đ	Ɗ
ᶑ	È	É	Ê	Ë	Ē	Ė
Ę	Ě	Ɇ	Ə	Ƒ	Ĝ	Ğ
Ġ	Ģ	Ǧ	Ǥ	Ɠ	Ƣ	Ĥ
Ħ	Ì	Í	Î	Ï	Ī	Į
İ,i	I,ı	IJ	Ĵ	Ɉ	Ķ	Ḱ
Ǩ	Ƙ	Ⱪ	Ĺ	Ļ	Ľ	Ŀ
Ł	Ɱ	Ñ	Ń	Ņ	Ň	N̈
Ɲ	Ƞ	Ŋ	Ò	Ó	Ô	Õ
Ö	Ø	Ő	Œ	Ơ	Ᵽ	Ƥ
P̃	Ɋ	ʠ	Ŕ	Ř	Ɍ	Ɽ
ß	ſ	Ś	Ŝ	Ş	Š	Þ
Ţ	Ť	Ŧ	Ⱦ	Ƭ	Ʈ	ẗ
Ù	Ú	Û	Ü	Ū	Ŭ	Ů
Ű	Ų	Ư	Ʉ	Ʋ	Ŵ	Ⱳ
Ẋ	Ý	Ŷ	Ÿ	Ɏ	Ƴ	Ź
Ẑ	Ẕ	Ż	Ž	Ƶ	Ȥ	Ⱬ

Знак ß (эсце́т, от нем. Eszett; известен также как «S острое», нем. scharfes S, и под рядом других названий) — лигатура из ſʒ (ſz; в готическом шрифте) или ſs (в антикве), первым элементом которой является так называемое «длинное S». Ныне используется только в немецком языке, но до XIX века более или менее регулярно применялся практически во всех европейских языках с письменностями на латинской основе, особенно в курсиве.

В немецких словарях при упорядочении по алфавиту знак ß обычно приравнивается к ss. Следует помнить, что замена символом ß двух букв ss не всегда правомерна, так как использование символа ß подразумевает удлинение предшествующей гласной, тогда как ss — её укорочение.

Лигатура ß имеет только строчное начертание (хотя в Юникоде 5.1 есть и заглавная ẞ). При необходимости записать содержащее ß слово только заглавными буквами ß заменяется на SS. В тех случаях, когда такая замена приводила к образованию трёх S подряд (например, в слове Maßstab), ранее рекомендовалось использовать SZ вместо SS или разделять слово дефисом: MASZSTAB, MASS-STAB. Ныне, когда последняя реформа немецкой орфографии отменила запрет на повторение трёх одинаковых согласных подряд, это правило, видимо, больше не применяется. Также рекомендовалось использовать SZ там, где иначе бы возникала нежелательная омография.

Такая же замена ß на ss (или на sz, в указанных выше случаях) используется при наборе текста в условиях технических ограничений (в старой машинописи, на телеграфе и т. п.), а также при воспроизведении немецких имён и названий в других языках на латинской письменной основе.

В Швейцарии с 1906 года эсцет не употребляется, а всегда пишется ss. Причиной этого, возможно, было распространение пишущей машинки. На швейцарской единой раскладке клавиатуры нужно было освободить место для французских и итальянских букв (ç, à, é и è).

Не следует путать латинскую лигатуру ß и греческую строчную букву бета (β). Несмотря на их внешнее сходство, последняя имеет собственную, отличную от знака первого, историю и, соответственно, значение.

Компьютерные коды

• В Unicode обозначается U+00DF. В версии 5.1 появился заглавный вариант — U+1E9E.
• В HTML и XML строчная буква обозначается как «ß» или «ß», заглавная же «ẞ».
• В TeX и LaTeX обозначается ss.

См. также

• Заглавная буква эсцет

В этой статье не хватает ссылок на источники информации. Информация должна быть проверяема, иначе она может быть поставлена под сомнение и удалена. Вы можете отредактировать эту статью, добавив ссылки на авторитетные источники. Эта отметка установлена 15 сентября 2011.

Немецкий язык
Языки Германии • Языки Австрии • Языки Швейцарии • Языки Люксембурга • Языки Лихтенштейна • Языки Бельгии
Строй языка	Письменность и фонетика Письменность (руны  • швабахер  • фрактура  • канцелярский шрифт  • готический курсив  • шрифт Зюттерлина  • народный шрифт  • шрифт Оффенбаха) • Алфавит (эсцет  • умлаут) • Фонетика (таблица МФА  • практическая транскрипция) Морфология Части речи: Артикль • Существительное • Прилагательное • Наречие • Местоимение • Числительное • Глагол • Предлог • Союз • Междометие Категории и формы: Род • Лицо • Число • Падеж • Время • Залог • Наклонение • Инфинитив • Причастие Лексика Словообразование (аффикс  • префикс  • суффикс  • словосложение) • Заимствования (латинские  • славянские  • арабские  • итальянские  • французские  • английские  • русские) • Синонимия и антонимия • Фразеология Синтаксис и правописание Предложение (члены предложения  • словосочетание  • синтаксические связи) Орфография • Пунктуация • История правописания (1876  • 1901  • 1944  • 1996)
Распространение	Как родной Немецкоговорящие страны (Германия  • Австрия  • Швейцария  • Бельгия  • Лихтенштейн  • Люксембург) • Страны Европы и Азии (страны Балтии  • Дания  • Франция  • Италия  • Нидерланды  • Польша  • Румыния  • Чехия  • Венгрия  • Россия  • Казахстан) • Страны Южной Америки (Бразилия  • Мексика  • Аргентина  • Парагвай  • Чили) • Страны Северной Америки (Канада  • США) • Страны Африки (Намибия  • ЮАР) • Папуа — Новая Гвинея и Австралия Как иностранный Изучение • Язык международных организаций
История	Deutsch (этимология) • Германское передвижение согласных (Закон Гримма  • Закон Вернера) • Прагерманский язык • Верхненемецкое передвижение согласных • Древневерхненемецкий язык (грамматика) • Средневерхненемецкий язык (грамматика) • Ранненововерхненемецкий язык (грамматика) • Нововерхненемецкий язык • Язык нацистской Германии • Язык ГДР
Разновидности	Литературный язык • Разговорный язык (литературно-разговорный  • общерегиональный  • городской  • жаргон) • Диалекты (нижненемецкие • верхненемецкие: средненемецкий и южнонемецкий) • Варианты языка (бундесдойч  • швейцарский  • австрийский  • люксембургский) • Контактные языки, креолы и варианты вне Европы (алеман колоньеро  • алеманьол  • аманадойч  • бароссадойч  • бельгранодойч  • денглиш  • зюдвестердойч  • квеля  • кюхендойч  • лауна-дойч  • наталер-дойч  • немецко-платский диалект  • пенсильванско-немецкий язык  • понашему  • техасдойч  • унсердойч  • хунсрюкский диалект  • хуттерский язык)
Персоналии	Иоганн Гутенберг • Мартин Лютер • Плодоносное общество (Мартин Опиц  • Андреас Грифиус  • Ганс Якоб Кристоффель фон Гриммельсгаузен) • Иоганн Кристоф Готтшед • Иоганн Кристоф Аделунг • Иоганн Вольфганг фон Гёте • Якоб и Вильгельм Гримм • Младограмматики • Конрад Дуден • Теодор Зибс
Портал «Немецкий язык»  •  Проект «Немецкий язык»

Иногда студенты спрашивают меня, правда ли, что ß в немецком языке больше не используют. Нет, ß была отменёна только в Швейцарии, а правила в немецком языке, на котором говорят в Германии, просто изменились, вследствие чего некоторые слова, которые раньше писались через ß, теперь правильно писать через ss. Разберёмся, когда что использовать, и узнаем, что это вообще за буква такая – ß.

На сегодняшний день ß используется только в немецком языке. Изначально этот символ был лигатурой (слиянием двух букв при письме). Читается ß как «эсцэт», ударение на второй слог. Также называется S острое (scharfes S).

Когда использовать ß, а когда ss? После дифтонгов (ei, eu, au, äu) и долгих гласных пишется ß, после кратких гласных – ss.

Буквосочетание ie практически всегда даёт долгий звук [i:], поэтому после него пишется ß: schießen, schließen, gießen.

Перебой ss и ß в формах глагола происходит именно в результате этих правил: schließen – schloss – geschlossen (в форме Präsens долгий гласный, в двух других – краткий), beißen – biss – gebissen (дифтонг в форме Präsens), lassen – ließ – gelassen, messen – maß – gemessen, sitzen – saß — gesessen (долгий гласный в форме Präteritum).

До реформы правописания (Rechtschreibreform) ß использовалась чаще: wußte, mußte, daß, laßen, Fluß, Rußland. Сейчас такой вариант написания считается ошибкой, правильно: wusste, musste, dass, lassen, Fluss, Russland. Даже если при соединении слов (Kompositum) на стыке оказываются три одинаковых согласных, как, например, в слове Flussschiff (Fluss + Schiff), замены на ß не происходит.

Неносителям долготу гласного определить, конечно, сложнее, поэтому в некоторых случаях правильный вариант написания проще запомнить: Fuß, Straße (долгий гласный), Tasse (краткий гласный).

Задания по немецкой грамматике
с ключами для самопроверки
по темам самых разных уровней сложности!

Замена ß на ss оправдана только тогда, когда использование ß невозможно: отсутствует нужная раскладка клавиатуры или текст набирается на пишущей машинке.

При написании слова, содержащего ß, заглавными буквами ß до недавнего времени заменяли на SS. В 2017 году символ ß был введён в употребление и в заглавном варианте, но так как он по-прежнему отсутствует во многих кодировках, использовать его при написании слова капсом получается не всегда.

Чтобы набрать ß на клавиатуре, на немецкой раскладке нужно нажать дефис, расположенный справа от нуля. Если устанавливать дополнительную раскладку не хочется, можно добавить в Word комбинации для автозамены.

Чтобы набрать ß на смартфоне, нужно долго коснуться буквы s и в появившемся списке букв выбрать нужную.

Слова на ß не начинаются, как, впрочем, и на ss. На ss могут быть только аббревиатуры, например, SSG (Schulsportgemeinschaft) — школьное спортивное общество.

Что забавно, именно эта буква была использована при первом письменном упоминании фамилии нашей семьи в переписи 1826 года (я много лет занимаюсь своим генеалогическим древом).

Это всё, что я хотела рассказать вам о букве ß в немецком языке. Если у вас появились вопросы, задайте их в комментариях!

Читайте также: Немецкий язык: определённый или неопределённый артикль?

И отличная новость! Много лет работая преподавателем немецкого и регулярно общаясь с немцами, я решила помочь вам в освоении этого языка. Здесь вы найдёте задания по грамматике с ключами для самопроверки по темам самых разных уровней сложности! Если после прохождения урока у вас останутся вопросы, я с удовольствием на них отвечу.

Задания по немецкой грамматике
с ключами для самопроверки
по темам самых разных уровней сложности!

С вами была Яна, мама в Интернете.