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1/ You probably have heard about the ominous letter "ß", which is only used in Standard #German orthography. It is used to write the sound [s]. Meet your new favourite letter in this thread #LinguisticSunday
![1/ You probably have heard about the ominous letter "ß", which is only used in Standard #German orthography. It is used to write the sound [s]. Meet your new favourite letter in this thread #LinguisticSunday](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeaWhrPXYAAHDU5.png "1/ You probably have heard about the ominous letter \"ß\", which is only used in Standard #German orthography. It is used to write the sound [s]. Meet your new favourite letter in this thread #LinguisticSunday")
2/ The sounds [s] and [z] are phonemes of Standard German. However, they are not written as <s> and <z>. <z> is used to write the affricate [t͡s] as in <Zaun> [t͡saʊ̥n] (compare to the cognate 'town'). That leaves <s> to express both [s] and [z]. But how does it work?
3/ Even though [s] and [z] are phonemes (there are some minimal pairs) they are also in a somewhat complementary distribution. In the onset of words, only [z] occurs. <Sohn> 'son' is pronounced [zo:n] and <Sonne> 'sun' [zɔnə].
4/ After short vowels and at the end of words, only [s] occurs, e.g. in <lassen> 'let' [lasən], <Wasser> 'water' [vasər], <was> 'what' [vas]. You see that [s] inside a word is spelled <ss> (it's not a geminate!) to mark the vowel as short.
5/ After long vowels and diphthongs, however, both [s] and [z] can occur and *here* "ß" is used to distinguish the sounds, see <Fliesen> 'tiles' [fli:zən] vs <fließen> [fli:sən].
6/ When I wrote my thread about Adelung's dictionary three weeks ago, I wondered whether he left any marks in Modern Standard German and indeed he did! The spelling conventions regarding the letter "ß" were based upon his considerations. https://twitter.com/dietweeterei/status/1282244897454592000?s=20
7/ "ß" was used to write [s] in nearly every context, in 1996 it was replaced by <ss> in after short vowels (cf. above). So, [mʊst] '(you) must' was spelled <mußt> until 1996 but is nowadays spelled <musst>. Only the "ß" after long vowels and diphthongs remained.
8/ Because "ß" was replaced by <ss> in this one context, some older writers tend to overgeneralize and also uses <ss> after long vowels where "ß" should be used. This leads to some homographs.
9/ My favourite one is [masən] <Massen> 'mass, high amount' vs [ma:sən] <Maßen> 'a moderate amount'. Sometimes writers spell both as <Massen>: "Er trinkt Bier in Massen." = 'He drinks beer in high/moderate amounts." 
#LinguisticSunday
#LinguisticSunday
