On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 12:18 PM Paul Winalski <paul.winal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> German also has a ligature letter called eszet that is a fusion of a > long s (the one that resembles the English letter f) and a short s. > Not a short s, but a z, as the name indicates: es-zett, S-Z. This reflects the use of z in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant sound distinct from s, derived from /t/ by the High German sound shift but distinct from original /s/. When the distinction was lost in the 13C, z came to be used for its modern sound /ts/, but the ligature came to represent the merged /s/.
