Been perusing late 17th and early 18th century texts, as one is wont to do, when I came across this pronoun rant.

I've seen this quote before, but was surprised to actually come across it while reading.

#Quaker #Books

For those who wish to see what happens next, the text is available online:

https://archive.org/details/historyoflifeoft00ellw/page/24/mode/2up

And, yes, early #Quakers were weird.

We're still weird, just in different ways.

@jetton @adrienne And for completeness, poſseſs can then become poßeß. As evidenced in the old German street signs. (They all end in -strasse, "street" - check alt text for details)

@skolima @jetton @adrienne Oh cool! There’s a sans serif version?! How do I access that?

@schardl8 The sans-serif font on the "Wattstraße" sign is probably

https://www.fontshop.com/families/ff-cst-berlin-west

As far as I'm aware, the west part of Berlin is the only place in Germany that uses this specific ß shape that makes the ligature visually obvious.

The font linked above also has an "East" variant with the normal round ß.

@skolima @jetton @adrienne

@jetton Someday I want know if there’s a rule for using long S vs curvy S

seems like there’s not

@notGordonAllport
Long s at the beginning of a word or in the middle. Short s at the end.

@jetton @notGordonAllport Also if there's a doubled 's', you would generally use short 's' for the second of the two, so for instance "possess" would usually be "poſseſs" rather than "poſſeſs". (This isn't consistent but it was general practice; it's just more readable).

@adrienne @notGordonAllport

Very good point. You are of course correct.

@jetton @notGordonAllport ... well except in Spirits, it appears (second last line).

@jetton @notGordonAllport (I'm something of a typography nerd.)

@adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport I've seen a few of these, often with ligatures (even in typeface), so kinda like a modern German ß but with a tail.

@tobtobxx @notGordonAllport
I assume that's because it is capitalized. Maybe. I'm not sure orthographic and typographic consistency is his strong point.

@adrienne

The best type of nerd.

Edit: I hadn't even realized I made a pun...

@vometia @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport The German ß is often replaced by ss, rather than sz, which is what the ligature is (ſʒ) . Why is that? Just a matter of the pronunciation?

@villavelius @vometia @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport I didn't even know "sz" was an alternative rendering! (I studied German for three years at school, but I was not very good at it.)

@mike @vometia @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport
You'd be surprised how often 'sz' or 'ss' show up in the scientific literature as 'ß', as in ß-carotene and the like. Blame the Greeks for having the look-alike β. Look up 'ss-carotene' in PubMed 😉. Nightmare for machine-reading of scientific literature.

@mike @villavelius @vometia @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport It’s literally called “sz”, but afaik, always considered to represent “ss”.
I’ve been told that the ß is retained because words like “mißstände” would be written “missstände”. Couldn’t it be “miszstände” instead?

@mike @villavelius @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport I only had one year of being not very good at it so I'm not sure if that makes me better or worse. My German teacher was actually German, though.

@schardl8 @villavelius @vometia @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport Ha! I've often heard it being called an "ess-set", but never registered that the "set" part is the letter "z".

What a dummy.

@mike Rollershue. That's all I remember from 6th grade German.

@vometia @villavelius @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport So was mine. Didn't help. I think my problem was trying to learn French and German at the same time. All the vocab got filed in my brain under the single category "foreign".

@mike @vometia @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport
German is not as easy for a native English speaker to learn as the Category I languages: Danish
Dutch
French
Italian
Norwegian
Portuguese
Romanian
Spanish (LatAm or Spain)
Swedish

German is a Category II language, needing about 50% more hours of practice than the ones above.

@mike @villavelius @adrienne @jetton @notGordonAllport Accurate, tho'.

My cousin's German but sounds like a Geordie. Her mum sounds like a German speaking Geordie. Conversely, my attempts at German sound like a Geordie speaking mumble, with some swearing (the bits I could actually remember, strangely).

@barubary With the long s and the capitalization of nouns, that text seems pretty German to me already. And I'm German.

@bhawthorne