IDNA2008: concerns about inconsistent mappings, and german sharp s

[Martin Duerst]

At 02:17 08/12/12, Markus Scherer wrote:
>On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 5:51 AM, Harald Alvestrand <<mailto:harald at alvestrand.no>harald at alvestrand.no> wrote:
>The conclusion seems to be that eszett and ss ARE equivalent in Switzerland and Austria, but are NOT equivalent in Germany.
>
>
>I find that statement flies against both the history of the sharp-s ligature and against recent evidence: The 1996 orthography reform changed the sharp-s vs. ss spelling of many very common words, including one of the 30 most frequent words (da$B!,(B->dass, ranking according to sources below), which shows that there is so little difference between the two spellings that the committees felt they could change when to use which.

The main reason for the change was a different one: The rules for
when to use ss and when to use "sz" were very complex. The new
rules are much simpler, even understandable for somebody like me
from Switzerland who never learned them: Use "sz" when using "ss"
would make you pronounce the word wrong (with a short preceeding vowel
when there should be a long one).

There are three cases (only the second word actually exists):

Strasse: short 'a', voiceless 's'
Strasze: long 'a', voiceless 's'
Strase: long 'a', voiced 's'

[the forth combination doesn't exist]

Regards,    Martin.


>[1] "dass" ranked 22nd: <http://www.vistawide.com/german/top_100_german_words.htm>http://www.vistawide.com/german/top_100_german_words.htm
>[2] "da$B!,(B" ranked 29th but counting "dass" separately: <http://german.about.com/library/blwfreq01.htm>http://german.about.com/library/blwfreq01.htm
>[3] "da$B!,(B" ranked 29th: <http://www.wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/html/wliste.html>http://www.wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/html/wliste.html
>
>markus
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#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp