Am 21.09.12 11:56, schrieb Eric Fiedler: > And only "Mäßig/mäßig" is correct today. That some publishers still manage to > get it wrong is typical of the situation today.
The matter really is not that simple: In Swiss German there is not ß (Eszett) at all. Now you might think that this is not relevant to the rest of the German-speaking community, but it is. How would you spell "mäßig" in a novel by a Swiss Author (of which there are quite a number of important ones, think of Dürrenmatt or Max Frisch), or vice versa? The Swiss also have no capitalized Umlauts, so words like "Öl" are spelled "Oel" in Swiss German. I would say that in any publication which is universally used, and that includes music publications, the use of "ss" instead of "ß" is acceptable, and not considered wrong. Were you publishing an official German text, ie that of a law, you would be expected to use the traditional but reformed spelling. My guess is that we will see another reform in a not so distant future, and the use of ß will be made optional. Even today there is quite a lot of confusion. A lot of people, myself included, are so used to write "daß" instead of "dass" that we find it hard to adopt the new rule. Eric is correct that there is also a lot of financial interest behind the reform: The publishers who publish schoolbooks have sold millions of new books of standard school books. Pretty much at the same time the local goverments introduced a part self financed school book system, were a large proportion of schoolbooks has to be bought be the parents. I grew up in a world where school books were bought by schools, and used many years by many students, before a new set was required. Just imagine what an immense boost this gave to the publishers. Johannes _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
