When I was but a young’un, my father had a session with an agent from John Hancock Insurance which resulted in my brother and I each receiving a 9"x2" blue cardboard tube containing a rolled up image copy of the Declaration of Independence (with the large John Hancock signature at the bottom) impressed on something resembling parchment (which had a unique smell to it).
Of course I had to read it. That presented quite the challenge for an 8-year-old. The scribe used the cursive version of ʃ at seemingly random intervals, which confounded me at least at first. The cursive ʃ looks a lot like a cursive f, except the bottom sweep goes opposite to the top sweep instead of taking the same path (which is a bit like just writing a standard print s in cursive loops).
I am given to understand that the letter in German orthography, ß, is a combination of the long s with a twisted s to form a double-s. I think the Germans must do that just to piss everyone else off.
The purfuit of happineff.
The Wikipedia article has a list of rules for when the long S could be used. It wasn’t used in place of the round S anywhere, at the whim of the writer – at least it wasn’t supposed to be, although undoubtedly people made mistakes. In particular, it was never supposed to be used at the end of a word. That’s why it’s sometimes called the “medial S”.
Pronounced that way (and if memory serves there was some recent official move to replace it with a double s), but originally s+z, and named “ess-zett”.
Not exactly: the letter ß is a combination of long “s” with a lowercase “z”. The z used to be written like this:
or like this:
so if you combine the long s and the z by writing them close to each other you get what the Germans call the ess-zett: ß
Almost looks like the Greek Beta, but not quite: β
No, not everybody. Just the right people.
ETA: Partially Ninja’d!
Only in some cases, like dass instead of daß, but not in others, Straße remains Straße, but can be written Strasse if your typewriter does not include the ß. The rules are not there just to piss eschereal off, German children must despair too. German pedagogy is not for the faint hearted!
speaking of which:
the world famous movie “The sound of music”, located and filmed in Austria - is nearly unknown in Austria … and there are hardly any Austrian actors playing in it.
well, two lost world wars does that to any language
- so they came up with the “scharfes S”, and
- the Beetle
- Hello Opal
Ordnung muß sein!
Correct, which is why
Would properly be “the purfuit of happinefs.”
ſ ≠ f
“The purſuit of happineſs”
I juſt couldn’t be arſed to figure how to do the ſ character.
Similarly, the Greek sigma has two forms. While English “s” has initial/medial/final “sſs”, Greek has “σσς”.
Ordnung iʃt das halbe Leben!
Hey! Thif if an Englifh only meffage board.
You seem to have a lifp.
Which gave me specific difficult, because it was “The Purſuit of Happineſs” – the scribe also had a vestigal germanic habit of randomly capitalizing nouns. But his “H” was stylized in a way that when I saw it, it looked to me like “Glarpinefs” (the lower-case “p” was also a problem).
ohhh … ʃe Germans … 
I particularly like blueberry purfuit but the store usually only carries strawberry.
You mean ſtrawberry?
The street signs of Berlin - with assorted typefaces, and various formats of the “ss”. Street Signs of Berlin – Berlin Typography (wordpress.com)