Yes you CAN use the umlaut hack

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  • Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
  • I got a lot of comments on a recent video saying that you cannot substitute anything else for umlauts or the letter "ß". In this video I explain more about the rules and why I think that actually you can substitute these letters... but only if you have no choice.
    More about the capital "ẞ":
    • German has a new lette...
    Chapters:
    00:00 A brief overview
    00:58 Unworkable workarounds
    01:53 Officially...
    02:42 What is "ß"?
    03:27 The long and the short of it
    04:11 In capitals
    04:55 The tricky Swiss
    Music:
    "Style Funk" and "Hot Swing"
    by Kevin MacLeod incompetech.com/
    Creative Commons Attribution licence
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    Germany
    Please don't send parcels or packages, or anything that has to be signed for.
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    www.rewboss.com/
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КОМЕНТАРІ • 540

  • @donpollo2897
    @donpollo2897 Рік тому +230

    We had an official rule in the Swiss equivalent of high school, that during school camps "Alkohol in Massen" is allowed. This was of course still no problem because everyone knows what it meant in that context. And of course we drank way too much anyway. :)

    • @CavHDeu
      @CavHDeu Рік тому +20

      At Oktoberfest they do both at the same time 😁

    • @Fritz_Haarmann
      @Fritz_Haarmann Рік тому +9

      I was genuinely confused just now.
      That's a good one.
      Alkohol in Massen ist aber definitiv erstrebenswerter als Alkohol in maßen.

    • @hckoenig
      @hckoenig Рік тому +8

      Whoever made up that rule had a sense of humour.

    • @matanadragonlin
      @matanadragonlin Рік тому +2

      Yeah, living in Switzerland, it is clear in almost every case, but sometimes I do wish back sth like the ß, just to show the difference clearly.
      Mass und Maß is a very good example for this. Also Busse and Buße.
      All written with ss it could be:
      many 'Busse' (short u) / buses,
      'Buße' / penance or
      'Busse' (long u): Swiss word for Strafzettel / all public order offences ticket / fine like a parking ticket.
      But Mass und Maß are mostly the ones I wish back the ß 🤷🏼‍♀️

    • @lojobambam2
      @lojobambam2 Рік тому +4

      @@Fritz_Haarmann Google Translate makes this phrase sound funny, it says "Alcohol in moderation is definitely more desirable than alcohol in moderation" lol

  • @hanshartfiel6394
    @hanshartfiel6394 Рік тому +128

    I'm German living in England. My son learned German at school and was told that the esszett is called "beta s". I told him otherwise and he started using the esszett . His teacher corrected him and insisted that it actually called beta s. Finally I wrote a letter to his teacher pointing out the correct wording of that particular letter. Of course, being a teacher he thought he knows it all but with the help of a number of clever books (that was pre-internet time) I was able to show him that I was right. The blighter from then on accused me of doing the home work for my son. Yes, I admit, I helped him when he had problems but, as I pointed out to the teacher, I also helped my son in other subjects when needed just likke any other parent would do.

    • @OntarioTrafficMan
      @OntarioTrafficMan Рік тому +3

      What is a blighter?

    • @hanshartfiel6394
      @hanshartfiel6394 Рік тому +30

      @@OntarioTrafficMan a blighter is a person who is regarded with contempt, irritation or pity. I would have called this chap a first class arrogant arsehole but that wouldn't have been nice.

    • @OntarioTrafficMan
      @OntarioTrafficMan Рік тому +4

      @@hanshartfiel6394 thanks, never heard that word before

    • @michaelgrabner8977
      @michaelgrabner8977 Рік тому +10

      @@OntarioTrafficMan "Blighter" = British English literally derived from "blight" in the sense of "eyesore" used for a person who is an "eyesore of a human being" basically a "disgrace of mankind"

    • @hanshartfiel6394
      @hanshartfiel6394 Рік тому +5

      @@OntarioTrafficMan I guess that's because you live in the colony and speak more American than English

  • @Goldfire-tt3dv
    @Goldfire-tt3dv Рік тому +76

    I keep telling my coworkers who are not (yet) fluent in German that their ultimate goal should be to be able to correct Germans when they're using their own language wrong. That will be the final proof that they have become fully Germanized.

    • @CLipka2373
      @CLipka2373 Рік тому +7

      As a German I _have_ to apply some insufferable nitpicking to your statement:
      The _ability_ to correct Germans isn't enough. The final proof of Germanization is in the _action_ .

    • @Goldfire-tt3dv
      @Goldfire-tt3dv Рік тому +2

      @@CLipka2373 Well, I stand corrected.

    • @vhaelen326
      @vhaelen326 9 місяців тому +2

      @@CLipka2373 i disagree, the ABILITY to correct germans is enough to prove you have mastered the german language, the ACTION of doing so proves you have mastered the german culture

    • @andyarken7906
      @andyarken7906 7 місяців тому

      @@vhaelen326 I agree with all three of you, even though you were correcting each other. What can I say, I'm Swiss.

  • @sempersuffragium9951
    @sempersuffragium9951 Рік тому +120

    The spelling with the "e" after the vowle is actually older than the umlaut. It comes from Latin when they use ae (Æ, æ) and oe (Œ, œ) as the sounds ay and ö respectively. The Germans then simply adopted this for their own language, but in script started to represent the "e" wit two dots over the letter.

    • @toraxmalu
      @toraxmalu Рік тому +16

      Ich sah auch schon mal diese Schreibweise in einem Kirchenbau aus den 50ern: "Hoͤhe"

    • @goebelmasse
      @goebelmasse Рік тому +27

      It is indeed a little more complicated. The letter "e" in German cursive (which unfortunately or fortunately is hardly used after 1945) consists essentially of two short dashes, and these were placed over the vowel to mark the umlaut. It wasn't a ligature as in "æ" but a stack. This eventually became the characters we use today for our funny umlauts.

    • @sempersuffragium9951
      @sempersuffragium9951 Рік тому +3

      @@goebelmasse Oh, that's interesting. I knew they used to write the e above the vowle, like Torax here mentions, but I always wondered how it came to be that an e was abreviated to two dots. Thanx for that info

    • @sempersuffragium9951
      @sempersuffragium9951 Рік тому +1

      @@goebelmasse Also, your username is goebelmasse?? Or göbelmaße? Are you trying to prove a point about umlauts 🙃?

    • @goebelmasse
      @goebelmasse Рік тому +6

      @@sempersuffragium9951 "Goebelmasse" is a nick I used as a young punk, in a time, in which German keyboards are rare and everybody wrote "ae", "oe", "ue" and "ss" instead of "ä", "ö", "ü" and "ß". Written correctly, it is "Göbelmasse". The word is hard to translate, als many informal compound words in German one will never find in any dictionary. The verb "göbeln" is very colloquial for "to vomit", and "Göbelmasse" is the substance produced by vomiting. Creating such a neologism with "-masse" sounds funny for a German, the formal word is "Erbrochenes". Native speakers of Germany parse "goebelmasse" with ease and see that "oe" is "ö" and "ss" is "ss". But for a non-native speaker it isn't that clear…

  • @laurentschmidt2758
    @laurentschmidt2758 Рік тому +33

    5:06: at least if you use beer as your favorite tipple - the sentence "ich trinke bier in maßen" still is dangerously ambiguous even with the Eszett properly put in. In Southern Germany a beer mug containing one litre of beer is called 'eine Maß' - it is the default size you get when you order at the Oktoberfest for instance, the Dative Plural of this is Maßen (that's the case you'll want if you use the preposition "in" before a word) so "ich trinke Bier in Maßen" is either "I drink beer in moderation" or "I drink at least two 1-litre-mugs of beer". I leave it to you to decide whether this latter meaning comes dangerously close to "I drink beer in massive amounts" or not...

    • @amirabu-slayyeh6702
      @amirabu-slayyeh6702 Рік тому

      Das Scharfe S wurde nach dem 2. Weltkrieg in Deutschland und Österreich eingeführt, weil die Schreibweise "ss" an Hitlers Schutzstaffel (Terrororganisation) erinnert. Ansonsten macht das Scharfe S keinen Unterschied in der Bedeutung und der Aussprache des Wortes, welche man am Kontext erahnen kann. Heutzutage hat das Wort "Schutzstaffel" keine Bedeutung mehr!

    • @KarlDMarx
      @KarlDMarx 9 місяців тому

      Strictly speaking it should be "aus Maßen"

    • @michaelschuckart2217
      @michaelschuckart2217 8 місяців тому

      Can a liquid be "massive"? ;-)

    • @KarlDMarx
      @KarlDMarx 8 місяців тому

      @@michaelschuckart2217 apparently even heart attacks can be massive ... as can be price reductions according to advertising specialists..

    • @KarlDMarx
      @KarlDMarx 8 місяців тому

      @@michaelschuckart2217 "Menschenmassen" can even be constituted of flimsy people.

  • @TilmanBaumann
    @TilmanBaumann Рік тому +87

    I love it when you school the Germans in the most German way possible

    • @FPanzer
      @FPanzer Рік тому +12

      Pointing to the Duden is kind of a Totschlagargument for germans, well done

    • @nilkonom
      @nilkonom Рік тому +2

      @@FPanzer nicht mehr seit "kucken" drinsteht

    • @andyarken7906
      @andyarken7906 7 місяців тому

      @@nilkonomEek!

  • @anon0815de
    @anon0815de Рік тому +26

    On Tuesday’s “Richard Osman’s House of Games” the contestant needed to spell Schrödinger. She spelt it “Schrodinger” which was considered correct. Richard and another contestant said, that they would have put an “e” in there, and thought they where wrong. Of course they were right, the question writer was wrong, as was the contestant.

    • @OP-1000
      @OP-1000 Рік тому

      I thought it was called Ringel S.

  • @Cau_No
    @Cau_No Рік тому +54

    Working on Linux with a German keyboard layout for years now, I Iearned that there are even four characters mapped to each key, typed in by the use of itself, [Shift], [Alt Gr] and [Shift] + [Alt Gr].
    This allows you to type almost every Latin derivative letter, like the Polish Łł, Danish Øø, Ææ, Icelandic Ðð, Þþ, …
    Also there are so-called "dead keys", which only give you such a character after pressing a second key in succession: `+a = à, ^+o = ô, ˚+a = å, ¨+i = ï, …
    I wish there were more lectures about this in computer classes …

    • @lonestarr1490
      @lonestarr1490 Рік тому +4

      Funny thing about the "dead keys": they also work with just spaces: "¸" for instance, which is the small hook that's supposed to go under a "c" or something: "ç".
      Well, I said it's a "funny thing" while it's actually quite a nuisance. I wrote my dissertation thesis in LaTeX on an Ubuntu system. For macros you require the backslash, which (at least on a German QWERTZ keyboard) you get by [AltGr]+[ß]. But the "¸" you get by typing [AltGr]+['], which is the key right next to [ß]. Similar things are true for many of the other dead keys. So, one can imagine, my dissertation was packed full with little ¸'s and ¨'s and what not.

    • @Cau_No
      @Cau_No Рік тому +3

      @@lonestarr1490 It gets even the more crazy when you look into character encodings, especially Unicode.
      There are multiple ways to encode those diacritics into a text, e.g.:
      - Ää Öö Üü - one character each
      - Ää Öö Üü - using "Combining Diacritical Marks" , which means these are actually two characters each, a letter followed by the 'combining diäresis', which allows you to put them on any letter you want as long as the font supports it (like D̈, Þ̈ δ̈, Д̈ …).
      And I even found a third solution once in a pdf, where the trema signs "¨“ [U+00A8] and the "a, o, u" were just overlayed to get the umlaut.

    • @namewarvergeben
      @namewarvergeben Рік тому +4

      "US-INTL with Alt-Gr dead keys" is the layout I use. It has
      [Alt-Gr]+Q = Ä
      [Alt-Gr]+P = Ö
      [Alt-Gr]+Y = Ü
      [Alt-Gr]+s = ß
      And countless other characters from many (albeit mostly Latin script) languages. The mappings (Q->Ä, Y->Ü) take some time to get used to, especially when coming from German keyboards that have those keys built in, but after a while it's just second nature. I use INTL keyboards because they are more convenient for programming (where the German layout has many of the brackets and other such symbols in inconvenient places)

    • @HenryLoenwind
      @HenryLoenwind Рік тому +3

      I wish there were more lectures about how finding out what a software you use offers in computer classes. I can't count the times I have been called to help someone and all I did was go through the menu until I found an entry that had exactly the same name as what they asked me to do for them. Although, nowadays that most programs hide their menu behind a tiny unlabelled button that's not even marked as a button, I find it harder and harder to blame people.

    • @TilmanBaumann
      @TilmanBaumann Рік тому

      I'm a huge fan of SunCompose. Easy to map on any useless key like the Windows key

  • @PlittHD
    @PlittHD Рік тому +77

    I still have respect for people who use the Captial ß

    • @modmaker7617
      @modmaker7617 Рік тому +9

      My android phone has the lowercase ß but it doesn't have the uppercase version. I have to copy and paste it from Wikipedia, ẞ.

    • @leDespicable
      @leDespicable Рік тому +4

      @@modmaker7617 Then you may want to switch to a different keyboard lol

    • @TheZett
      @TheZett Рік тому +5

      The ẞ is the only proper solution for writing the ß in capitals.

    • @OntarioTrafficMan
      @OntarioTrafficMan Рік тому

      @@modmaker7617 my android phone has ẞ, you hold down S on the keyboard

    • @modmaker7617
      @modmaker7617 Рік тому

      @@OntarioTrafficMan
      When I have the caps-lock on and hold down S. It always pops ups with a lowercase ß. That's the only letter on my android phone keyboard that stays lowercase when the caps-lock is on.
      I won't change my keyboard because I need it to type in Polish, my native language and this keyboard is also compatible with most not all European languages like Spanish, French and Czech.

  • @moatl6945
    @moatl6945 Рік тому +12

    Writing the letter ß as sz _was_ an optional spelling for uppercase in the old rules before 1997, and only if there was an ambiguity.
    This rule was so optional, authorities used lowercase ß on ID cards and passports…

    • @darth0tator
      @darth0tator Рік тому +1

      On one hand I would like the use of sz, cause it would stomp some of those artificial ambiguities and it would finally be what the name says it should be. On the other hand sz really looks confusing

    • @alvazi1
      @alvazi1 Рік тому +2

      From my military service in the late 1970s I remember that in Telex pages the ß was always spelled as sz - I guess Telex transmissions used a very limited character set. Assuming it was Telex and not some other communication technology.

    • @FlorianBaumann
      @FlorianBaumann 8 місяців тому +1

      ​@@alvazi1 I did my Grundwehrdienst in 1996/97 and we still used these old teletypers. And yes, ß had do be substituted by sz there.

  •  Рік тому +4

    In further defence of the vowel followed by "e" to substitute the Umlaut: I have an old 19th century cookbook that has the Umlaut represented by the vowels with a small "e" above the vowel instead of the dots.

  • @svenmarkert6368
    @svenmarkert6368 14 днів тому

    I'm a 48 year-old German and I've never thought of or seen the comparison of drinking "in Maßen" versus "in Massen". I feel so clever now!

  • @HalfEye79
    @HalfEye79 Рік тому +8

    When you write a letter to Münster, but you ignore the Umlaut, then you shouldn't be surprised, when the letter goes somewhere else. To be precise: to the city Munster. Yes it exists and you would have to drive about 3 hours between the two.

    • @zam1am
      @zam1am Рік тому

      Oh! I fell for that one although I grew up next door to Münster. I did not opt out of Bundeswehr because of reasons that no longer matter and when I got the letter I was like: YES! (stupid army, can't even afford printers that print umlauts!) aaand: What's this number? Cannot be the zip code because that would be 48something ... Uneasiness grows. Where's the Diercke? So I ended up with 3 months of free rides on the IC Sperber from Iforgotwhence to Munster (Örtze), iirc and I still hate every minute wasted there. The Münsterland is also a region where ae/oe is different from the umlauts: Laer which is close to Leer which sounds like Lär, Graes and Coesfeld.

    • @nijinoshita3301
      @nijinoshita3301 Рік тому +1

      ok but that is why we have Postcodes and I would hope the post checks them (tho I can't really confirm that they do) so even if they ignore the umlaut it should still reach Münster...

    • @e1woqf
      @e1woqf Рік тому

      The usage of the correct postcode would easily avoid this problem.
      I live in Münster and parcels from abroad are often addressed to Munster, but the postcode 48155 avoids misunderstandings, so far 😎

  • @joegoss30
    @joegoss30 Рік тому +6

    I hit the reality of this when I worked for SAP AG in the US. Back in the 1990s, I needed to email a German colleague who had an umlaut in his name. There wasn't an email directory that could help me bypass the problem, so someone taught me the "insert e" trick.

  • @johncrwarner
    @johncrwarner Рік тому +42

    I largely use a German keyboard
    because it has the äöüß and accented characters
    readily available.
    This is useful if I am writing in
    French, Estonia and Finnish.
    I gave up on UK or US keyboards
    because of the alt-key codes
    which are a nightmare.
    My fingers now automatically go to
    the German key positions
    so if I have to type on a UK or US keyboard
    I have to think where the key is.

    • @user-vi1lv2xi9i
      @user-vi1lv2xi9i Рік тому +3

      nice poetry

    • @Maric18
      @Maric18 Рік тому +6

      @@user-vi1lv2xi9i i think its the frequent
      and random line breaks
      that make it sound
      like poetry

    • @MildlyInterested_
      @MildlyInterested_ Рік тому +1

      @@Maric18
      maybe
      it
      would
      sound
      even
      more
      poetic
      if
      you
      would
      type
      every
      word
      in
      a
      separate
      line
      x)

    • @Maric18
      @Maric18 Рік тому +1

      @@MildlyInterested_
      that is nearly as
      poetic as counting
      syllables would be

    •  Рік тому +1

      I highly prefer the US Intl (with Alt Gr) layout for better availability of punctuation and parenthesis characters. It makes available lots of other diacritic characters in reasonable positions. I'm touch typing anyway, so I don't care that much about the physical layout. If it were not for the punctuation characters, German T3 layout would be a good alternative. Sorry, I'm no poet XD

  • @mirandahotspring4019
    @mirandahotspring4019 Рік тому +1

    Just discovered you channel. As a Kiwi who lived several years in Germany I think it is excellent! My German father-in-law used to call the scharfes S a Rucksack S, but I never heard the term Eszett used when I was there.

  • @Oemerich
    @Oemerich Рік тому +2

    Very good and informative video, it seems that you did your research very well! I commend you for giving objective information without giving too much about the trolls with their bullshit, but simply correcting them. Great work! Why I watch this as a native German though I don't know. Seems to me your videos are just really well made!

  • @digitaleswerken
    @digitaleswerken Рік тому +19

    I actually have it stated in my Austrian Passport that Trawöger equals Trawoeger . Which is super helpful when you want to get a plane ticket outside a German speaking country. Because most reservation systems still don't accept Unicode in a name.

    • @m0llux
      @m0llux Рік тому +9

      In fact, it's not the website's fault that ÄÖÜẞ are not accepted, its because airlines still use a horridly old booking system that still often relies on mainframe computers that only know capital letters, and no special characters whatsoever. That's why, on your plane tickets, you are spelled MR ANDREAS TRAWOEGER

    • @lwilton
      @lwilton Рік тому +3

      @@m0llux I spent most of my lifetime writing software for those ancient computers. To be fair, all computers I know of since the early 1970s have both upper and lowercase, and all computers from the accounting machine days in the 1940s have known at least a few special characters. It is the reservation software that validates the field contents, and is programmed to only allow uppercase and nothing else.
      Now that said, mainframes generally only know ASCII or the approximately equivalent EBCDIC code, not Unicode. So umlauts, accent marks, etc. are right out in the normal character encoding. I suppose you could write u: for an umlaut, but nobody would recognize it.

    • @edi9892
      @edi9892 Рік тому

      Some people have it far worse:
      Featherstone (pronounced Fanshore)
      Nguyen (Nuen)
      Aneesha (Anisha)
      and the list goes on...
      I've seen a case where cops didn't accept official documents insisting that the name was incorrectly spelled! He tried to argue with them and it became a huge mess, which earned him stalker cops who gave him parking tickets for months! (they kept falsely flagging his car for parking illegally).

    • @vytah
      @vytah Рік тому

      @@m0llux I've heard about a guy named Amr whose name sometimes ends up being shortened to A by airlines.

    • @michaelschuckart2217
      @michaelschuckart2217 8 місяців тому +1

      @@edi9892 " gave him parking tickets for months! (they kept falsely flagging his car for parking illegally)."
      It also works the other way round: I still try to pay the toll for the Tyne Tunnel/Bridge between England and Scotland. It is impossible, because my "Vehicle does not exist" (German licence plate with Umlaut "Ö"?). Strangely it worked fine with Deptford Crossing. Can it have to do with the geographical latitude??

  • @elirome6978
    @elirome6978 Рік тому +9

    I agree on everything you said! I just wanted to make a case for calling the ß "scharfes S" instead of "Eszett". If you are e.g. of Hungarian descent and your name is Laszlo you dont want people to write it Laßlo :D
    Where I come from this would never happen as "scharfes S" makes it very clear that you didnt mean the letters s and z.

    • @darth0tator
      @darth0tator Рік тому

      I would then argue, that the s in Laszlo is pretty much silent and it just becomes Lazlo...or Laslo? damnit...we need more S sounds!

    • @rosiefay7283
      @rosiefay7283 Рік тому +2

      @@darth0tator In Hungarian, "s" is /ʃ/ (e.g. Sándor, Solti), "sz" is /s/ (e.g. László), and "z" is /z/ (e.g. Zoltán). So the s and z don't represent separate sounds, but they are both needed.
      "sz" can occur in German, too (e.g. Tageszeit), and ß would be wrong there, too.

    • @joda7129
      @joda7129 Рік тому

      I immediately thought of hungarian when i saw that sz combo.

    • @tru7hhimself
      @tru7hhimself Рік тому

      hungarian spelling is probably the reason we have a ß at all in german. i bet it originated in the austro-hungarian empire.

  • @MartinBrenner
    @MartinBrenner Рік тому +8

    Using the hack is better than just writing the letter without dots. Two famous Umlaut cities are Köln and Düsseldorf and while English speakers avoid one problem by using Cologne, Düsseldorf usually gets written as Dusseldorf which is slightly insulting but I have seen it too often on foreign airport departure boards. Every German will fully understand the spelling with ae, oe, ue and ss.

    • @schmoemi3386
      @schmoemi3386 Рік тому +3

      So if you're incapable of writing "Mötörhead", just write "Moetoerhead" 🤪

    • @silubr1
      @silubr1 Рік тому +1

      @@schmoemi3386 I used to pronounce Motörhead as if it had a real, German ö.

    • @schmoemi3386
      @schmoemi3386 Рік тому

      @@silubr1 🤣🤣🤣

    • @jayhill2193
      @jayhill2193 Рік тому

      for anyone who is still not convinced of the gravity of such a spelling mistake, a "Dussel" is a dimwit, so by ignoring the Umlaut, you're questioning the intelligence of everyone of the city's citizens.

    • @Steve14ps
      @Steve14ps Рік тому

      Zürich has an umlaut as well

  • @HansBezemer
    @HansBezemer Рік тому +14

    In Dutch, the "sz" is sometimes called "Ringel S". Don't ask me why.

    • @gwaptiva
      @gwaptiva Рік тому +1

      They do that in Germany too, but not often

    • @Rubax52
      @Rubax52 Рік тому +3

      We (in southwest Germany) also say "dreierles-s" (3-times s) :-)

    • @aramisortsbottcher8201
      @aramisortsbottcher8201 Рік тому

      Buckel-s oder Rucksack-s :)

    • @HansBezemer
      @HansBezemer Рік тому +2

      @Matejko108 Well, German is just hopelessly antiquated Dutch ;-)

    • @HansBezemer
      @HansBezemer Рік тому +1

      @Matejko108 And frankly - I spent a lot of time in Germany. Especially in Berlin. I'm always happy to be there, since it offers me the opportunity to speak German.

  • @thalamay
    @thalamay Рік тому +5

    I’ve recently been really into old prints and manuscripts.
    One interesting thing to look for is changes in letters and how they were written over time.
    For example, the Eszett developed out of a ligature combining the letters “S” and “Z” (the clue is in the name, so the brothers Grimm shouldn’t have lost that 19th century fight).
    But there were also other letters like that which don’t exist anymore. One letter probably started out as an abbreviation, not a ligature, but it certainly became its own thing. It looks like the numeral “8” but with a little opening up top. Basically, it was a gothic letter “d” with a little squiggle added up top. That squiggle represented the letters “er”. So the glyph stands for the syllable “der” and it was used a lot in old manuscripts and early prints.
    Abbreviations like that were extremely common and the rules around them were incredibly complex. I tried to decipher a hand written Latin sentence from the 16th century once. Just one little sentence and really short to boot, yet I had to study massive books on abbreviations to figure it out. There were so many of these abbreviations .
    Luckily, most abbreviations disappeared with the printing press. But in manuscripts they lingered on. My grandparents still learned in school to write “mm” as one “m” with a dash on top. That was the last of these abbreviation rules. But there used to be countless rules and symbols for abbreviations, some of which also made the jump into the era of printing presses, like the glyph representing “der” which I mentioned above.

    • @pierrefley5000
      @pierrefley5000 Рік тому

      If ß is a ligature of sz, why does it look like a ligature of ſs (long + short s)?

    • @thalamay
      @thalamay Рік тому

      @@pierrefley5000 Well, that’s easy, it doesn’t. The curvature of the second part is opposite that of a short s, in line with that of a z. Also, when you look at gothic scripts, it’s even more obvious. There you can easily make out the z. Just look at the (German) Wikipedia entry. Not only can you read about the origins as ligature of long-s and z, there are also plenty of images which make it rather obvious.

    • @thalamay
      @thalamay Рік тому

      To clarify, the letter ß has been simplified and smoothened over the centuries, so I can see how one would interpret the second half of the ligature as “s” instead of “z”. But that is quickly corrected by looking at a gothic ß. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

    • @thalamay
      @thalamay Рік тому +1

      @@pierrefley5000 I have to correct myself slightly. After looking into it a bit, I found that in Italy a separate ligature developed independently during the 15th century, a combination of long- and short-s which ended up looking very similar when using an Antiqua font.
      That may be why some modern fonts make the ß look like a combination of long-s and s.
      But in a German context, the ß developed out of long-s and z.

    • @silubr1
      @silubr1 Рік тому

      @@pierrefley5000 It’s really kind of a mixture of both.

  • @timberwoof
    @timberwoof Рік тому +1

    On MacOS with an English keyboard, pressing option-U will put an umlaut over the following lowercase or uppercase vowel: ä ö ü Ä Ö Ü. Option-s gives you an ß. Shift-option-2 gives an €. This is much easier than trying to remember alt-codes.

  • @oelp
    @oelp Рік тому +2

    I live near the French border and sometimes we would get leaflets from French supermarkets that would advertise special deals to Germans in German language. The ones featuring alcohol always had the advice "ALKOHOL IN MASSEN GENIESSEN" at the bottom.

    • @rainerwaansinn
      @rainerwaansinn Рік тому

      Es wäre manches einfacher, wenn Deutsch dem Finnisch näher käme: IN MAASSEN GENIISSEN. Aber leider sind unsere deutschen Regeln nicht so 😞Deutsch tut sich schwer mit dem Verschriftlichen von lang oder kurz gesprochen Vokalen. Maße könnte man auch Maasse schreiben, ähnlich dem Fluss, Maas ("von der Maas bis an die Memel"). Wäre dann klar von MASSE zu unterscheiden.
      Some things would be easier if German were closer to Finnish: IN MAASSEN GENIISSEN. But unfortunately 😞 our German rules are not so. German has a hard time with writing long or short spoken vowels. Measures could also be written Maasse, similar to the river, Maas ("from the Meuse to the Memel"). Would then be clearly distinguishable from MASSE.

  • @widicamdotnet
    @widicamdotnet Рік тому +5

    ... und dann gibt es die Bondrucker, die behaupten man hätte im Biergarten einen KLOB MIT SOBE gegessen und in der Bäckerei eine Kµsebreze und eine Nu³ecke :)

    • @DrAHorn
      @DrAHorn Рік тому

      Naja, ich störe mich mehr an den Hanseln die für unsere Pässe einen Zeichensatz verwenden auf dem man die Null nicht vom großen O unterscheiden kann. 😒

  • @RM-el3gw
    @RM-el3gw Рік тому

    Very insightful Andrew

  • @soundscape26
    @soundscape26 Рік тому +2

    I only use the ALT codes because very rarely do I need to use umlauts and eszetts... when I have to I use the cheat sheet for those. If my usage of those were frequent I would probably switch to another method, being the added E or getting a new keyboard.
    Anyway, good and succinct explanation as always.

    • @joda7129
      @joda7129 Рік тому

      i just google "o with dots" and then copy and paste.

  • @CLipka2373
    @CLipka2373 Рік тому

    Excellently researched, described and presented.
    As a German with Abitur and son of a teacher, nitpicker and walking encyclopedia, I can attest to the truth of its content.

    • @MalloonTarka
      @MalloonTarka 7 місяців тому

      Objection! Encyclopedias can't walk.

  • @amirabu-slayyeh6702
    @amirabu-slayyeh6702 2 місяці тому +1

    I can explain that in German, French and Portuguese using examples:
    German:
    lauten = to sound, to be
    läuten = to ring
    zahlen= to pay
    zählen = to count
    rosten = to rust
    rösten = to roast
    die Masse = the mass
    die Maße = the dimensions
    French:
    ou = or
    où = where
    mais = but
    le maïs = the corn
    l'élève = the student
    élevé/élevée = high
    a = has
    à = at, to
    du (de + le) = of/from the (masculine)
    dû (devoir) = had to
    Portuguese:
    a caça = the hunting
    a caca = the poop
    a maçã = the apple
    a maca = the stretcher
    o cocó = the poop
    o coco = the coconut
    é = is
    e = and
    o bebé = the baby
    ele/ela bebe = he/she/it drinks

  • @turkishmaid
    @turkishmaid Рік тому

    „This is the Internet after all.“ - Andrew, you made my day 😊

  • @IzzyIkigai
    @IzzyIkigai Рік тому +1

    When people proclaim it's not called "Eszett" they just exhibit a lack of knowledge about the history of the ligature that became a singular letter in modern German writing. Historically it was the two graphemes for S and Z put together into a ligature. If you've seen older German writing(writen/printed in Fraktur typefaces), you know where that ligature came from and that it is indeed an S and a Z. Over time the use was more widely adopted and what was once a simple ligature became it's own grapheme. I personally would love to see the grapheme have an official replacement rule set as "sz" rather than "ss" for clarity and I personally use it that way but I doubt that change will ever become official, we'll probably rather see the letter disappear alltogether.

  • @SchtamesRyan
    @SchtamesRyan Рік тому

    Imho absolutely correct in any way! Great video!

  • @Henning_S.
    @Henning_S. Рік тому +1

    My old Farm house here in Germany was built in 1830 and has a text engraved above the main door, they actually wrote "Straßen" as "Straszen"
    They also wrote "Hilfe" as "Hulfe" , "thut" instead of "tut" , "last" instead of "lässt" and also replaced every ü with just u...

    • @BirgitNietsch
      @BirgitNietsch Рік тому +2

      Das Esszett ist tatsächlich eine Ligatur aus dem langen s (das so aussieht wie ein f ohne Querstrich) und einen z (das in alten Schreibschriften einer 3 ähnlich sah).

  • @voxveritas333
    @voxveritas333 6 місяців тому

    This reminds me of the arguments between British and American spellings of words in English. -ize vs. -ise, encyclopoedia vs. encyclopedia, etc.

  • @RoyaltyInTraining.
    @RoyaltyInTraining. Рік тому +5

    0:43 Einen schönen *Grusz* aus Franken!

    • @TheZett
      @TheZett Рік тому +2

      Immer noch die bessere Ersetzungsform, da es eindeutiger ist und offensichtlich als Ersetzungsform ins Auge sticht, wie die ae/oe/ue-Schreibweisen.

    • @barbarossarotbart
      @barbarossarotbart Рік тому

      @@TheZett Aber nicht die offizielle! Leider verwenden heute viele Schreibweisen, die offiziell falsch sind.

    •  Рік тому

      @@TheZett Nö, falsch, weil es sich beschissen liest.

  • @arnoldhau1
    @arnoldhau1 Рік тому +1

    I also never ever heard of the term "Eszet". I only ever know it als "scharfes s". That may be one of those regional things. Here in Switzerland where I live now (I am orignally from Vienna) it does not exist and I do not miss it at all. I hardly even notice. Funnly enough, German lost its more commonly used "langes s" long ago (it looked similar to the letter "f") and it was no issue as well.
    So "ß" is definitly not required, it is just unnescessary complication. And yes, given that all Swiss just use "ss" instead of the "ß" means that is is absolutely allowed and yes, it is the replacement to use. If you dont have "ß", dont worry just use "ss", more than 5 million native German speakers do so.

  • @amirabu-slayyeh6702
    @amirabu-slayyeh6702 Рік тому +1

    Unterschied zwischen rosten und rösten:
    rosten = unter Einwirkung von Feuchtigkeit gelblich bis rötlich braun werden
    Beispiel: Metall rostet, wenn es nass wird.
    rösten = etwas längere Zeit ohne Zusatz von Fett oder Wasser grosser Hitze aussetzen, sodass es gar wird, eine braune Kruste bekommt, knusprig wird
    Beispiel: Essen auf dem Grill rösten

  • @Bisqwit
    @Bisqwit Рік тому

    On the other hand, in Finnish, definitely do _not_ replace the umlaut/diaeresis with ”e”. The name Kyösti Käyhkö (Finnish y is same as German ü) is pronounced very, _very_ differently from if it were spelled Kueoesti Kaeuehkoe. We pronounce each letter symbol separately and take meticulous care in doing so. Ö and ä are single-letter symbols, so they are single sounds. Oe and ae are sequences of two distinct vowels each (diphthongs).
    If you are unable to type letters with a diaeresis, then bare letters will do. It’s a different vowel then, but we can usually guess what you meant. Some words may become ambiguous and entirely change meaning if the reader doesn’t notice what’s going on. But never, _ever_ replace diaeresis with an added e. It will make the text an ordeal to read for no benefit whatsoever.
    If you have a keyboard that has these symbols instead: æ/ø (such as dk/is/no), you can use them, but do not go out of your way to use them. They do not exist in Finnish, so it always introduces some overhead to the reading.

    • @rewboss
      @rewboss  Рік тому

      Well, naturally, the rules for German orthography don't apply to Finnish orthography. They're completely different languages. They're not even in the same family (Finnish is one of the few languages in Europe that is not Indo-European).

    • @Bisqwit
      @Bisqwit Рік тому

      @@rewboss That is absolutely true. But it doesn’t stop sports TV overlay systems from 1980s (that are still being used today at least in spirit, for some reason) from treating Finnish names like they’re German and spelling Hämäläinen as Haemaelaeinen.

  • @matanadragonlin
    @matanadragonlin Рік тому +2

    Good job 👍🏻
    One further infornation you might mentioned the video before:
    Originally the ß sz actually was a S and a Z written together. Back in a time where they used to write in Sütterlin script (yes invented by Herr Sütterlin or Suetterlin)
    (The scriot, where you often mix up the s and the f)
    The f got a stroke, the s doesnt.
    The z was totally different and looked more bulbous like a g in handwriting.
    Now put the two together. The f without the stroke and the z looking like g. And voila you got the extraordinary letter ß looking a bit like a capital B. 😁

    • @rewboss
      @rewboss  Рік тому +3

      The "ß" was a thing long before Sütterlin was, and has a much more complicated history (and it's that complicated history that explains why it's called "eszett" but represents "ss"). And although every German has heard of Sütterlin, it was actually quite rare: it was only used for a few decades in the first half of the 20th century, and it was used in schools to teach handwriting. The normal cursive used in real life was Kurrent, and Sütterlin based his script on Kurrent.

    • @matanadragonlin
      @matanadragonlin Рік тому

      @@rewboss correct. 👍🏻
      And thanks for the extra Informationen. 😊 Germans' knowledge of the ß / ss often just reaches back to Sütterlin. 🙈 And I fear even this knowledge will be forgotten soon.

  • @csucskos
    @csucskos Рік тому +1

    Thanks rewboß!

  • @julienloicdevogue7433
    @julienloicdevogue7433 Рік тому

    Mir ist vor kurz klar geworden dass das ß kein Buchstabe im eigentlichen Sinne ist. Im sütterlin (eigentlich "deutsche Schrift") werden s und z so geschrieben dass es praktisch ein ß ergibt... Diese Sprache ist ein Wunder und der größte deutsche Schatz das es gibt! Vielen Dank für Ihre Video.

  • @Lampe2020
    @Lampe2020 8 місяців тому +1

    I'm happy to be on Linux, as the Swedish keyboard layouts in Window$ have a ton of dead AltGr+[letter key] combos, while they're all filled with special characters in Linux, such as AltGr+S for ß (or the arrow characters on the following key combos: AltGr+Y:←, AltGr+Shift+U:↑, AltGr+U:↓, AltGr+I:→).

  • @rzeka
    @rzeka Рік тому

    As a non-German-speaker, just curious, would there ever be a case where the letter sequences pronounced /aə/ /oə/ /uə/ could accidentally be interpreted as /ɛ/ /ø/ /y/? Or is there no situation where it would be ambiguous?

    • @HenryLoenwind
      @HenryLoenwind Рік тому +1

      With very few exceptions, the only positions in native German words where you have ae/oe/ue as separately pronounced vowels are at the edges of syllables and postfixes (e.g. -er). Those are usually quite obvious unless you have "place name"+"-er" and you don't know the place. There's also an old production where an added e denoted a long vowel, this has long been replaced with an h, but there still are names around. Those you just have to know, as there is no other indication that e.g. Coesfeld is Kohsfeld and not Kösfeld or Koësfeld. Then there's a number of foreign words like Muezzin or the very old may-be-influenced-by-french-or-not Poet.
      BTW, Germans will tend to use aë/oë/uë when seeing ae/oe/ue in a text that also has äöü unless it looks like a place name and they are aware of the long vowel marker (it's regional). The assumption is "there must be a reason it's not written äöü" and there are not that many alternative pronunciations to choose from.
      PS: e as a low vowel marker is still commonly used with i. Something that tends to drive native English speakers crazy, as this means ie and ei swap their pronunciations between German and English.

    • @rzeka
      @rzeka Рік тому

      Very informative!
      P.S. I don't think many English speakers have much trouble with representing /ai/. German spellings like "Einstein" are very recognizable and easy to remember for English speakers. And representing /i/ isn't too weird either - if you pluralize an English noun ending in , the convention is to replace the with (ex. puppy -> puppies) but it's still pronounced /i/.

    • @HenryLoenwind
      @HenryLoenwind Рік тому +1

      @@rzeka You'd think so, but there seems to be some psychological block when learning a foreign language. For some reason, people reduce their skill in their native language to what they have explicitly learned, not what they actually do. Likely caused by actively trying to suppress their instincts applying native language rules automatically to the other language.
      For example, it can be quite funny watching someone trying to pronounce the schwa at the end of German words...when you know that schwa is the most common vocal in spoken English (it's how the e in "the" sounds when it's not ee). Same to some extent with ö; English has a sound that's close enough (especially for beginners), e.g. in nerd, but people still end up with knots in their tongues from trying. And then there are some that pronounce ö like ü, but can't get the ü right.
      The same is even true for native speakers in their native language. In standard German, "das" (the) and "dass" (that) are pronounced the same, so it's understandable that children struggle to get those right. But in my dialect region, they are pronounced differently (das->des). Absolutely nobody mixes them up when speaking, but it doesn't help them write those correctly at all.

  • @williamduncan7401
    @williamduncan7401 Рік тому

    On Linux you can use Compose + ÷ " with any layout. ẞ is compose + s + s

  • @tobiasbudde5852
    @tobiasbudde5852 Рік тому +4

    Also ae, ue, oe are not always an Umlaut but long vowels (Dehnungs-e) or a diphthong. Or just two separate vowels.

    • @KaiHenningsen
      @KaiHenningsen Рік тому

      From the local area: Coerde is spoken with an ö, Coesfeld is spoken with a long o. Names don't need to follow the rules, and often don't.

  • @nirfz
    @nirfz Рік тому

    Learned something new today! (Long ago, in school i was told that the swiss would actually write sz instead of ß.)

  • @sevenlux7093
    @sevenlux7093 Рік тому

    Erfrischend, wie immer!

  • @cristianseres1353
    @cristianseres1353 Рік тому +1

    I studied German in Finland before the spelling reform in 1996 and I still find it confusing when to use ß and when ss. I prefer the old spelling, however Balletttänzerin is a nice word. In Finnish we can have four same vowels in a row, but not more than two consonants.

    • @beeble2003
      @beeble2003 Рік тому

      Invernessshire has a triple-s in English, though proper nouns are cheating.

  •  Рік тому

    Such a controversial topics definitely needs a follow-up regarding long s/round s and long s/z ligatures formerly used in printing presses. And of course a disussion of long s and round s spelling rules of old :D
    I'm sure there'll be something about the Grimm brothers in it, too ...

  • @x3cion
    @x3cion Рік тому +1

    Never knew the eszett is always smaller case. I actually wrote things like STRAßE without thinking of your examples at all. Thanks for that!

  • @frankhooper7871
    @frankhooper7871 Рік тому

    I was recently using a program that opens a specific window with the [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Shift]+[S] key combo - imagine my surprise when not only did it open the window, but it also inserted a "ẞ" [yes, a capital "ß"] into the window's search box!

  • @alestane2
    @alestane2 Рік тому +1

    0:20 No. The accent on the e is just usually omitted when witting in uppercase, depending on the font. It's *not* optional otherwise.

    • @rewboss
      @rewboss  Рік тому

      But the point is that if the circumstances dictate, you can simply omit the accent. That's not possible in German: it's either "KÖLN" or "KOELN", never "KOLN".

    • @debug9424
      @debug9424 4 місяці тому

      ​@@rewboss​ It's not even a stylistic choice, it's entirely wrong spelling, only seen in archaic 90's broken fonts and the rare extremely lazy signage like in your example.
      "cafe" would definitely be read as the sound "caff", or like the english for baby cow; I'll stick to drinking café instead of attempting the same with calves (eww)

  • @mg4361
    @mg4361 Рік тому +3

    I really like the ß/ẞ, it looks somehow medieval, like a leftover from the fraktur script. I hope it doesn't die out.

    • @steffahn
      @steffahn Рік тому +1

      Not only looks like but *is* a leftover. It's literally a ligature of ſs, a double s consisting of a long s (commonly used in Fraktur fonts) and a (in modern view) “normal”s that regularly appeared in Fraktur only at the end of words or the end of parts of compound words. Hence also the old spelling rules pre 1996 making use of ß at the end of the word like in “daß”, because that's what you'll naturally get in Fraktur fonts by writing “dass”, but making only the final s not a long s, i. e. “daſs”, and then using the ligature ß for a cleaner look.
      I don't know the design considerations that make up the capital ẞ, maybe they just used the style of ß based on ſz ligatures, but with a “ʒ”- style Z. Such a style of ß exists for the lower case version, too, in some fonts, but in those where it doesn't, they might have decided its a nice way to optically distinguish the thing from the lower case letter. That, and also the ẞ seems to be slightly wider than ß, giving it a shape more similar to most other upper case letters.

    • @SunnyTomcat1
      @SunnyTomcat1 Рік тому

      @@steffahn Correct, a few days ago I've seen Rewboss' video from 7 years ago where he explained this very good (ua-cam.com/video/cMo4gJIlDeU/v-deo.html). As far as I know the capital ß was an invention of the ISO because every other letter has a non-capital and a capital and therefore there was kind of gap in the ISO standard. I've heard it some time ago but not sure. In reality the capital ß is not used and never was, and if then it's a mistake.

    • @silubr1
      @silubr1 Рік тому +1

      @@steffahn The letter ß is really somewhat of an amalgamation of two ligatures, ſs and ſʒ (whence the name Eszett).
      There have been, over the years, many suggestions for a capital, most of which just looked like crap. ẞ looks reasonably niche and also not too much like any other letter (B in particular).

  • @UsmanBello
    @UsmanBello Рік тому

    I use a customized US English keyboard layout on my Windows computer that I brought over with me from the States. I in addition to mapping "CTRL-ALT 3" to "£" and "CTRL-ALT 4" to "€", I used a label maker and printed out all the common diacritics that I need for the German and Spanish letters along with their mapping numbers. I use shorthand on the label like "ü252" and "Ñ209" to stand for typing in ALT-0252 and ALT-0209 respectively. I then stuck the resulting 30cm label to the top of my desk monitor attached to my laptop.

    • @gwaptiva
      @gwaptiva Рік тому

      Living in Germany and having to type German teaches you to learn those codes

    • @UsmanBello
      @UsmanBello Рік тому

      @@gwaptiva This is only for my US keyboard setup. I recently acquired a Samsung Galaxy Book 360 notebook computer from Samsung Germany. They only offer "Deutsche Tastur" which help me greatly. All I need to memorize are: (1) most of the special diacritics are on my right hand and that (2) the Z and Y characters are switched around. from US keyboard. Another thing that influenced my purchase of it is that it was discounted at €1275 marked down from €1699 and Klarna was offering 0% zinsen for 12 months on it. :-)

    • @gwaptiva
      @gwaptiva Рік тому

      @@UsmanBello Writing software code on a German keyboard is a nightmare; all the extra keystrokes you have to do to get \| etc... it's why I put up with the occasional Alt-code typing

  • @willemceuleers3789
    @willemceuleers3789 Рік тому

    I am afraid that in French the accents above uppercase letters are as mandatory as they are in German, so tells me my dictionary. On a 'French' AZERTY-keyboard they are easy to make, by tapping 'alt gr' together with the given accent first, then tapping uppercase together with the actual letter . Only if your keyboard can't form accents above uppercase letters, you may ommit them. In French speaking countries this shouldn't be an issue, should it? Still, accentless uppercase is widely spread in French... By the way, thanks for your brilliant uploads, the contents as well as the presentation; always very enjoyable. Cheerio, Willem (Belgium, with an AZERTY-keyboard, of course)

  • @hackbertgrutzkotz7653
    @hackbertgrutzkotz7653 Рік тому

    Are there still people out there that don´t know rewboss always does his research? I weep for them.;)

  • @uprisingsnake7152
    @uprisingsnake7152 Рік тому

    During the recent remodelling of the Station "Schwabstraße" in Stuttgart someone wrote "Schwabstrasse" at the stations signposts.

  • @InspektorDreyfus
    @InspektorDreyfus Рік тому +3

    Der Pöt ist eventül ein virtüller Wichtigtür.

    • @hubi0079
      @hubi0079 Рік тому +2

      Dank Werner ist eventül schon lange ein echtes Wort. 🤣

  • @brucequinn
    @brucequinn Рік тому

    Wonderful

  • @Cadfael007
    @Cadfael007 Рік тому

    My family name is written with an Umlaut. But Umlaute can cause severe problems in an email address or a website's name. So I write it "ue" there. If you can type the "ß" you should do so because "Alkohol in Maßen" (a bit) is different to "Alkohol in Massen (a lot).

  • @johncrwarner
    @johncrwarner Рік тому +1

    Interestingly the town of Oelde
    where I used to work
    used in the nineteenth century
    to be written Ölde
    but the problem was perceived to be
    that the umlaut on the O wasn't clear
    so postal workers had to stop to think about it
    so the town changed the spelling of its name.

    • @roli9091
      @roli9091 Рік тому

      In Lower German place names "oe" usually stands for a long "o" like in "Soest" or "Coesfeld". So in Westphalia one would expext to read "Oelde" not like "Ölde" but like "Oolde". It's the same with "Oerlinghausen" that is actually pronounced "Örlinghausen". It's confusing.

    • @johncrwarner
      @johncrwarner Рік тому

      @@roli9091
      I was aware of Soest etc but on a late 19th century map of the area I looked at in Bielefeld library - Oelde was written as Ölde and is pronounced like that today.

  • @maryreid4273
    @maryreid4273 4 місяці тому

    I have memorised the codes for the lower case ä, ö, ü and ß, but yet to memorise the upper case (which I find I use less anyway).

  • @Astrofrank
    @Astrofrank Рік тому +53

    Third possibility: Copy the letter from a web page where you can find it.
    Btw.: It is always fascinating when a guy who is officially also German since only a few years knows more about Germany and German culture - including language - than many or even most native Germans.

    • @Delibro
      @Delibro Рік тому +1

      This should be wondering about those German folks, rather about him ;)

    • @theopuscula
      @theopuscula Рік тому +11

      @@Delibro Not really. Anyone living in a foreign country will likely have some special interest in particularly that country that goes way beyond the interest an average native of that country has for it. After all, they moved there, spent a great deal of (usually adult) lifetime learning its language and will see contrasts to their place of origin on every corner. I'm sure there are a lot of people from Germany living in the UK the US and many other places who know more details about historical or cultural things of those places than most people you would randomly ask on the street will remember from their school days. Add the fact that accuracy when it comes to information spread in schools is often shaky and boiled down at best, and you will get similar results in a lot of places.

    • @stevenschwartzhoff1703
      @stevenschwartzhoff1703 Рік тому +2

      There is also the insert symbol function in the Insert menu in Word which will offer you all the symbols you have available (including Arabic...). May take a while to find them, but it will then stay in your last used menu.

    • @aramisortsbottcher8201
      @aramisortsbottcher8201 Рік тому

      @@theopuscula My russian immigrated neighbour uses better German than I do. XD

  • @sirati9770
    @sirati9770 Рік тому

    I am a German who only uses a keyboard with UK layout and while I can switch to a German keyboard to type them i dont know where which umlaut is so I always use the replacement

  • @13Luk6iul
    @13Luk6iul Рік тому

    Absolutely!

  • @fionaeckert4556
    @fionaeckert4556 Рік тому

    The ß is actually a ligatur in the Kurrent font that was in use in 19th century in Germany. It puts together the lower case s and z that's why it is called eßzett.

  • @pauljmorton
    @pauljmorton 9 місяців тому +1

    In Finnish, you definitely shouldn't replace ä and ö with ae and oe. They are completely different things representing totally different phonemes. E.g. the words "hän" and "haen" are very different words pronounced significantly differently, "hän" being the third person singular pronoun, and "haen" being "I fetch". Moreover, since Finnish has what's called vowel harmony, lots of äs and ös will appear in the same word, such as "hätääntyä" (to get alarmed), so spelling that as "haetaeaentyae" is just ridiculously difficult to read. So if you're unable to write ä and ö, the best workaround is to just write them as a and o.

  • @Parciwal_Gaming
    @Parciwal_Gaming Рік тому

    The "windows" + "." Menu gives you access to all letter variants, oc only on windows computers and windows 10 (maby windows 11)

  • @aixtom979
    @aixtom979 Рік тому

    Just a quick comment that the "-a doesn't only "work on windows" but slightly different on all Linux/Unix systems that have a compose-key configured. (I for example usually map my caps-lock key to compose) So you can type ä with compose-"-a, or ß with compose-s-s, or a lot of other international symbols like ¥ as compose-=-y or the nordic æ with compose-a-e or å with compose-o-a, or € with compose-=-c and a lot of other quite "intuitive" combinations. And there are also tools that add that functionality to Windows.

  • @ripno2672
    @ripno2672 2 місяці тому

    I usually replace an eset with an sz rather then ss if im aware of the entomological history of a word and know historically it was sz rather then ss. I do the same sort of thing in english and french, like for example monitour and monitor are used as different words for me, one being a screen, another being an action, or english words derived from french like government becomes gouvernement. I only use these changes in certain contexts though and often not with people who are just going to be very confused.

  • @someopinion2846
    @someopinion2846 Рік тому

    Thank you, mr. Boßom.

  • @DBqFetti
    @DBqFetti Рік тому +1

    We learned "scharfes s" in pre school. Later on, we switched the term to "eszett". It always looks a bit infantile to me, seeing adults calling it "scharfes s", like they missed something whilst growing up.

  • @MannyBrum
    @MannyBrum Рік тому

    In the late 90s as a teenager I had to get online late at night because my parents didn't want me tying up the phone line during the day, so when I went online there was a disproportionate number of people from Europe in chatrooms and message boards so I ended up talking to a lot of Germans. I would help them practice English and they would help me practice German. I remember a lot of them used the e to denote an umlaut even though they (presumably) had a German keyboard. This is actually how I learned about this. Also, a pro tip, if you're going to be writing a lot in a language that uses special characters whether it be German or Old English, just type the characters out once somewhere and copy and paste them as needed. If you're good with the copy and paste macros, it's faster than alt codes.

    • @beeble2003
      @beeble2003 Рік тому

      In the late 90s, a lot of computer systems couldn't cope with non-ASCII characters, so it doesn't surprise me that they'd use e's instead of umlauts, even with a German keyboard. (By the way, "practice" is the noun,, and "practise" the verb. Same spelling rule as "advice" vs "advise", but the latter's easy to remember because it matches the pronunciation.)

  • @derAlphabet
    @derAlphabet Рік тому

    Who would have guessed, that you'd make German grammar for me interesting, neither my teachers, my parents or myself :)
    Also: 5:02 in Bavaria there's also die Maß, the beer mug (against the rules spoken with a short a). Although it would be probably "Ich trinke aus Maßen".

    • @sksaddrakk5183
      @sksaddrakk5183 Рік тому

      But in Bavaria a Mass is not only the mug itself, it is also a unit of measure so one could say 'Ich trinke eine Mass Bier' however, as far as I know, there is no plural for 'Mass'... it is '1 Mass, 2 Mass, 3 Mass etc. In Switzerland there are three units of measure for beer: 'Stange' (literally translated 'a pole') which is a third of a litre, 'Kübel' which translates as 'Bucket' (half a litre) and a 'Stiefel' ('Boot') which is two litres in volume.

    • @Uhraya
      @Uhraya Рік тому

      I think that one is a bit tricky/confusing since the Bavarian "Mass" seems to originate from the word "das Maß" since it is as @SKSaddrakk said a unit of measure. I guess it is called "Mass" to not confuse it with some type of "Maß" since that exists in Bavaria too ("Nimmst a mal a Maß" -> "take measure" vs "Nimmst a mal a Mass" -> "just take yourself 1 litre beer")

  • @chrishalle1982
    @chrishalle1982 Рік тому

    Kannst du mir ein Beispiel geben für ein großes SZ? Ich kenne keinen Fall im Deutschen wo es das gäbe. 😊

    • @rewboss
      @rewboss  Рік тому

      ICH TRINKE IN MAẞEN!
      Klar, es gibt kein Wort, das mit "ß" anfängt. Das große "ẞ" ist wirklich nur dann nützlich, wenn man in GROẞBUCHSTABEN schreibt, und das ist hoffentlich sehr selten der Fall.
      Das "ẞ" wurde eingeführt, um bei Personalausweisen zwischen Schreibweisen wie "WEISS", "WEISZ" und "WEIẞ" unterscheiden zu können.

  • @martinw.8572
    @martinw.8572 Рік тому +1

    Taking a look into the DIN 5002.22 Standart, the name "Eszett" is the official word in the german Phonetic alphabet for the "ß" character, so... yeah. Probably the right name for it?

  • @MATT-2033
    @MATT-2033 Рік тому

    I started playing metro exudes and before i started playing changed the language the characters speak to German. I wonder how useful that will be seeing right now im in the process of learning how to speak and read GERMAN.

  • @SchmulKrieger
    @SchmulKrieger Рік тому

    The pronunciation predicts where to set an ß, yes, but for the reason to pronounce the word correctly, which is that the ß lengthens the previous vowel, and because of this, you should use it this way, because it is also why the other usage of ß was abolished.

  • @oooshafiqooo
    @oooshafiqooo Рік тому

    INTRESSANT

  • @LovisPlatz
    @LovisPlatz Рік тому

    As a typogaphy student, I in fact wouldn't advice to use the uppercase ß in most cases, it really looks out of place most of the time, because it is an artificial letter just introduced to allow proper spelling of names in all caps - for IDs for example. As you pointed out, the general rule is to replace the uppercase ß by double S and there is no reason to change that procesure, just because the ẞ was invented a few years ago for bureaucratic reasons.

    • @LovisPlatz
      @LovisPlatz Рік тому

      I am not sure if you told that yet, but the name Eszett (ß) actually contains the typographic origin of the letter. Eszett (which is the spelled out version of the letters SZ) originally just written as an "sz" which in old blackletter writing looks like "ſʒ" was later combined into just a single symbol and although the look of the original letters changed over time, the look of the "new" symbol "ß" stayed nearly the same.

  • @ninjaz5736
    @ninjaz5736 Рік тому

    I wrote a script to change my caps lock key (which I only ever use about once a week, for a very specific use case) into an "Umlaut Key" - a little icon pops up on the taskbar with a german or british flag, and when the german flag is on, caps lock doesn't function (and is automatically switched off after I couldn't type in lowercase without using the shift key...), and typing an a, o or u while pressing it makes ä, ö or ü (and the same with AOU -> ÄÖÜ). I have both s and b tied to ß, as the ß looks rather like a B and 14 year old me thought it would be nice to have both options (I personally use the "b" shortcut more often). It's served me well for years (the flags were the only major update), and means I can type like a german on my british keyboard (which is the better keyboard, just saying). Shame it only works on windows, not linux too. I'm still using "Alt-Gr+[, a" for that (if memory serves, it's muscle memory now). Confuses the living daylights out of my german friends though when they quickly want to search something and they keys aren't there XD

  • @killstrees
    @killstrees Рік тому

    I remember back in middle school we had a typing class that used a rather outdated program and at one point late in the year when we were supposed to be proficient typists, the book had a couple examples of typing addresses from foreign countries (I am in the US). Of course one example was from Germany and when it got to the street name, they used a capital "b", "B", instead of "ß" in "straße"! I attempted to use "ss" as a work around and was marked wrong. Pretty sad whoever wrote that program didn't take the time to explain the situation. They just completely ignored it and acted as if the German spelling was wrong. Most Americans won't have a clue, but it bugged me.

  • @haku7335
    @haku7335 Рік тому

    Gutes Video 👍🏿

  • @foxvoss1420
    @foxvoss1420 Рік тому +1

    The ß is actually a ligature of the letters s and z. If you got on old book written in Gothische Frakturschrift you will see how the letters s and z looked like.

    • @rewboss
      @rewboss  Рік тому

      In Fraktur the "ß" is a ligature of "sz", but in Antiqua it is a ligature of "ss". This was effectively confirmed by the 1901 Orthographic Conference.
      Originally "ss" and "sz" represented slightly different sounds. But over time "ss" came to be pronounced the same as "sz", and at that point people started getting confused over whether to write "ss" or "sz". Over time "ss" won the argument, but the ligature "ß" remained and continued to be called "eszett".

    • @foxvoss1420
      @foxvoss1420 Рік тому

      @@rewboss No, I don't contradict that, I was simply explaining why the ß called also Eszett, while it does not resembles the letters s and z of fonts that are used nowadays.

    • @erkinalp
      @erkinalp Рік тому

      The actual mystery is why ss and sz merged rather than sch and sz.

  • @frankfurtrob866
    @frankfurtrob866 Рік тому

    Interesting - i use deepl so no issue with umlauts but what about addresses? Why is it Bahnstraße and not Bahnstrasse

    • @popogast
      @popogast Рік тому

      Bitte nicht Bahnstraße mit Bahntrasse verwechseln!

  • @knirpsknirps
    @knirpsknirps Рік тому +2

    Thanks for clearing this up. You explained the rules and naming conventions exactly like I learned them in school, so no complains here :)
    One thing (because I'm just that pedantic): The issue in computer systems is less often the font (i.e. how the letters are displayed on the screen or printed on the printer) but rather the character encoding (i.e. what letter the program in question can represent in memory).
    The thing with the font can be circumvented in a lot of ways, web browsers for example use fallbacks if a specific character cannot be rendered in the selected font. This may look a bit weird, but at least the letter is displayed correctly.
    Text encoding on the other hand is a more difficult thing. In theory, this problem has been solved by the unicode standard since the nineties. In practice, this problem still occurs in some software, for different reasons:
    - some systems are just that old and do not use a unicode encoding internally (often in the administration of countries, which leads to people not being able to use their actual name in documents which in turn leads to annoying questions whenever their passport is checked)
    - some (old) standards just specify the use of ASCII in certain places and it would break the internet to completely change them. There are some workarounds for that but not all software handles them the way you would expect it
    - security reasons: there are things called homoglyphs, i.e. different characters that look more or less the same when displayed, but are a different character internally. For example "sparkasse" and "sрarkasse" look pretty similar, but in one case the second letter is the latin p and in the other case it is a cyrillic letter. So to prevent attacks based on this confusion, the character set is limited in some places.
    Fortunately we have the replacements you explained in this video (and the previous video about this). Thanks again, because it always annoys the heck out of me if someone just drops the umlaut completely.

  • @mathiaslist6705
    @mathiaslist6705 Рік тому

    We were young and they put as in school and learning German was pretty hard although it was supposed to be our first language. German is simply not written as it is spelled and that's why our dear Germanisten have a faible for useless letters. Proven by the 21st century introduction of the capital letter ß. Once our German teacher confessed that pupils no longer making spelling mistakes would be her greatest nightmare.

  • @s8w5
    @s8w5 Рік тому

    Windows has a standard tool (always installed with it) called "Character Map". It shows all character available in a given font and you can copy it from there easily into your documents.
    This is yet another way of "typing" the character without having to substitute it, and of course all of these "hacks" are a bit more effort you might want to avoid when just writing something once. However, I am always a bit upset when I see UA-cam video titles doing it wrong, because it kind of like shouts "look, I made a thing but I didn't want to put any effort into it".

    • @barvdw
      @barvdw Рік тому

      of course, there are quite a few ways around it, but they are all quite cumbersome when you're just writing a short text message on a keyboard that doesn't have them.

  • @ContinuumGaming
    @ContinuumGaming Рік тому

    Totally right. Not much more to say about it.

  • @nellekeglansdorp1595
    @nellekeglansdorp1595 Рік тому

    To complicate matters on the Eszett versus Scharfes S front, in the Netherlands wie are told to call it a Ringel S.

  • @Hollaraedulioe
    @Hollaraedulioe Рік тому

    Well, the use of SZ as long replacement did not vanish already in the 19th century. In telegrams and more so telex communication it persisted and was even the only allowed replacement. Personally I only learned that when being trained as Fernschreiber (telex-operator) during Bundeswehr. Use of SZ was mandatory to avoid any misinterpretation of SS as replacement vs. SS as regular spelling.
    (On a side note, pronunciation of SS and SZ is not really about the vowel before, but in itself different - that's why it's other name is 'Scharfes S'. Of course, this differs on region and gets more and more lost. I blame it on Northerners being omnipresent on TV).

  • @Deksudo
    @Deksudo Рік тому +2

    Huh? This is one of the first things you learn in any German (as a foreign language) class, and all of my teachers, most of whom were native speakers, all taught me the exact same stuff; If you don't have the umlauts, just put an extra e, and ß is ss in a pinch. I'd have never thought the thema was so controversial.

    • @rewboss
      @rewboss  Рік тому +3

      This is the internet. There is nothing that isn't controversial.

    • @Deksudo
      @Deksudo Рік тому

      @@rewboss True!

    • @DrAHorn
      @DrAHorn Рік тому

      @@rewboss Well, I would argue that even on the internet it's not that controversial. Not like e.g. the question if you should use vi or emacs.
      But maybe we hang out in different corners of the internet. 😁

  • @reintsh
    @reintsh Рік тому

    Why is it called Ess-Zett and written Ess-Ess? And I also call it Ringel-S, as mentioned by HansBezemer (I'm Dutch).

  • @pixoontube2912
    @pixoontube2912 Рік тому +2

    Something that really annoys me is the fact, that some people tried replacing the ß with an upper case B, because non-Germans think it looks similar. I often read street names in English texts like "HauptstraBe", "SchadowstraBe", or "StraBenbahn".

    • @thomasl.9090
      @thomasl.9090 Рік тому +1

      Or use the greek beta instead...

    • @Cau_No
      @Cau_No Рік тому

      @@thomasl.9090 Fun trivia: Old IBM computers actually used the beta as an ß in the OEM encoding.
      There wasn't much room left in 256 codes after ASCII used up half of it, so they mixed some mathematical symbols and special characters together.
      Thanks to Unicode we now can use every symbol of any writing system at the same time, or we couldn't have Wikipedia…

    • @fourteen-bit
      @fourteen-bit Рік тому +1

      Ha, yeah, it got this and beta on parcels addressed to me :D

  • @PeterStaudtFischbach
    @PeterStaudtFischbach 8 місяців тому

    I just now noticed that you live in Aschaffenburg, the town I was born, by seeing all the real life examples like ROßMARKT 😊. Only then I noticed that your address is shown in the Abspann anyhow. Egal, viele Grüße in meine Heimat.

  • @musiqtee
    @musiqtee Рік тому

    Well, I’m 🇳🇴, a small linguistic “æøå” area (with Denmark). I simply change the “soft” keyboard on any handheld device to English or German (sometimes Swedish). With a computer, the foreign letters are accessible through modifier keys (on a Mac). All dandy, but don’t make me any better at writing German 😅…

  • @larshanhart7138
    @larshanhart7138 Рік тому +3

    “Eszett” is an interesting name for it, as it describes where it got its shape from for some fonts/designs (or at least I think it did): ſʒ (long s + z).
    I only realized that when I was in Berlin; the font used on the street signs there makes it hard to miss.
    The ß design, however, comes from ſs (long s + round s), I think.

  • @FoxyVulpes
    @FoxyVulpes Рік тому

    The rules said here, are all correct, and I even "acknowledge" them in the video before. I learned that in school in the early 1990's. Note: I never attended a school in Germany, as I don't live in Germany!

  • @peterholzer4481
    @peterholzer4481 Рік тому

    I tried to look up the rules in the "Amtliches Regelwerk des Rats für deutsche Rechtschreibung" and to my surprise I did find the rule for replacing the ß with ss, but NOT the one for the umlauts. My 26 year old printed Duden has both rules in "Hinweise für das Maschinenschreiben" .

  • @NFSHeld
    @NFSHeld Рік тому

    For those who don't know yet: on a regular German keyboard, the uppercase ß is written by holding Alt Gr and Shift and then hitting ß: ẞ
    For those who wonder and don't have a German keyboard: this is different from all other letters including ä/ö/ü, because ß is a separate key (like ä/ö/ü as well), but since ß used to be a lowercase only letter, Shift+ß was re-assigned to ?. And Alt Gr+ß as next best option was already taken for \. So the only remaining option was Alt Gr+Shift+ß all together.

    • @Max_G4
      @Max_G4 8 місяців тому

      In School, we were taught that it ß was always an uppercase letter, hemce my non-understanding of why one would need an uppercase ß