S, the Sütterlin letter s

History

The letter S is the 19th letter of the German alphabet. Phonetically, it represents a sibilant fricative, pronounced voiced /z/ in syllable onsets before vowels and voiceless /s/ in codas and clusters.

Sütterlin retained the obligatory orthographic distinction between long s and round s: long s is an upright vertical line with an upper loop, while round s is a small rounded oval with an interior tie. Capital S is an upright, balanced S-curve spanning the upper two zones.

The dual-s rule was mandatory in German orthography until the abolition of Kurrent and Sütterlin in 1941. In compound words, a round s at the end of a morpheme ('Wachstube' from Wach-Stube vs 'Wachstube' from Wachs-Tube) resolved ambiguities that modern Latin print cannot distinguish.

S began as a Proto-Sinaitic bow.^[1] Greek had no sh sound,^[2] so the Greeks changed the letter's value to s and turned it through 90 degrees.^[3] The Sütterlin ß still lets one guess that it grew from long s and z.^[4]