Consensus Call on Latin Sharp S and Greek Final Sigma

["Martin J. Dürst"]

On 2009/11/30 17:57, Alexander Mayrhofer wrote:

> Besides that, use of Latin Small Letter Sharp S has been significantly
> reduced by changes to German grammar in 1996/2004/2006,

Yes. It has been reduced to those cases where it marks a distinct 
pronunciation in opposition to "ss" (in both cases, the s is sharp 
(non-voiced), but for "ss", the previous vowel is short, whereas for sz, 
it is long). I don't see why this kind of reduction would provide any 
argument on the issue at hand.

> and it's use has
> been completely abolished in Switzerland in 2006.

I'm not sure where you got 2006 from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ß#Switzerland_and_Liechtenstein is 
definitely much closer to my recollection. I started school in 
Switzerland in the 1960s, and never heard about ß until a student moved 
in from Austria and joined our class and started asking about it.

Regards,   Martin.

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp