Tuesday 11 July 2017

grammatologie

To the dismay of some orthographic purist, the German Spelling Council (Rat für detsche Rechtschreibung oder RdR) the Eszett—ß will finally be given a proper capital (majuscule) form.
Instead of the rare but possibly confusing representation of a double S for the upper case letter, now people can officially exercise the option of using ẞ—großes Eszett. The pictured example is from sixty years ago but was an unofficial, unsanctioned capital glyph that the East German dictionary publisher designed for its own use, and there were other antecedents as well—going back nearly a century. STRASSE or STRAẞE now are both accepted but the same council session also decreed that certain Teutonicisms of foreign words like Joga or Ketschup are Verboten and the native spelling (more on spelling reform here and here) should be retained.