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What are some of the historical reasons why the orthographic symbol ß is not used in Swiss Standard German and “ss” is used instead?

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2 Answers2

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It is because of the typewriter. A Swiss typewriter needs to support three languages: German, French, and Italian. Therefore on the Swiss typewriter, there was no ß key. It also has only lowercase umlauts ä, ö, and ü. A picture of a Swiss typewriter can be seen here.

The lack of that key has led to a subsequent deprecation of the ß overall.

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Sir Cornflakes
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    Related: That's also why Swiss town names don't start with Umlauts and use Oe Ae Ue instead (e.g. Oerlikon). – Peter Dec 17 '18 at 08:46
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    This doesn't sound like a sufficient reasoning (in the logical sense) to me. One could also state "a swiss typewriter needs [...]. Therefore on the Swiss typewriter, there are ßäöü and ´`^°" – Sebastian Mach Dec 17 '18 at 09:31
  • @SebastianMach back in the old days when typewriters where still mechanical, this wasn't that easy – Josef Dec 17 '18 at 10:03
  • @SebastianMach In the olden days, languages were far more beholden to practical considerations than they are now. And why wouldn't they be? This is how languages have always evolved: necessity as well as changing habits. – Lightness Races in Orbit Dec 17 '18 at 10:51
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    @Josef: It does not sound plausible to me that the magic upper limit of the number of types is reached exactly where regional characters come into play. A typewriter from the same epoch e.g. features (roughly) 77 keys: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b2/bd/57/b2bd57885e1da4a15aff7a56891e627f.jpg – Sebastian Mach Dec 17 '18 at 10:52
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    @LightnessRacesinOrbit: Of course. Note that I am not criticizing any facts. I am just criticizing the "reasoning" and explanation of this answer. – Sebastian Mach Dec 17 '18 at 10:53
  • @SebastianMach I understand. I am just criticising your criticising ;) – Lightness Races in Orbit Dec 17 '18 at 11:06
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    @SebastianMach The swiss typewriter linked to in the answer actually has more possible strokes than the one in your comment. Yours has 76 keys resulting in a stroke but no shift (hence the need to separate keys for upper and lower case), the answer's has 46 keys resulting in a stroke, but has a shift keys, which results in 92 possible strokes. And that's still not enough. It's weird, though, they they chose to use separate keys for ä, ö and ü instead of the dead key approach of just having ¨ (like they have ^ and `). Probably due to the higher frequency of those letters. – jcaron Dec 17 '18 at 11:59
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    I don't think this answer is correct. German typewriters did not have ß either until the 1930s. See this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Typewriter_Adler_No.7(1).jpg – fdb Dec 17 '18 at 12:35
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    It sounds kind of plausible, but do you have any evidence for this claim? – henning Dec 17 '18 at 14:23
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    @jcaron: Yes. The point is that jknappen states because of multi-language-support, it's hard to support ß, which is not even a logical argument. The pure number of keys can't be reason enough; to support that, I added that no-shift-keyboard to the discussion, which has more physical keys. – Sebastian Mach Dec 17 '18 at 14:38
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    I hereby claim this: The typewriter has no ß because there's no ß in Swiss. Now, whose claim-without-evidence is more plausible and more true, and why? (don't get me wrong - I am just hopelessly trying to tickle some logic- or evident-based reasoning out of jknappen, which, as my guts tell me, won't happen) – Sebastian Mach Dec 17 '18 at 14:40
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    @fdb Despite being german-made, I'm not sure that typewriter was for the german market. The plaque just above the keyboard mentions Italy. The keyboard includes keys for letters that are predominantly french (é, ç). Maybe it was a Swiss version already? – jcaron Dec 17 '18 at 15:00
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    @fdb this version (from 1911) includes ß (visible on the M key, and on the typewritten example text). – jcaron Dec 17 '18 at 15:11
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The Swiss government has an explanation on p. 18. One contributing factor is typography, namely the rise of use of the Antiqua font, which was claimed to not include ß. I have no evaluation of the truthiness of that claim, for the relevant historical period, i.e. prior to 1901. It is certainly the case that its shape in Antique was not uniform.

The rules for using the letter have been complicated and much of the 1996 German spelling reform was about rules for s. As to why Switzerland was earlier and more radical in eliminating ß, this may be a cultural matter. Pairs like Flosse (fin), Floße (rafts), Buße (penance), Busse (buses) are rare and contextually not likely to lead to confusion. One predicts that Masse (mass), Maße (dimensions) might still be distinguished with ss/ß.

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    "more radical in eliminating ß" - this seems to imply the changes of the 1996 spelling reform had the intention of eliminating ß, which is not quite the case. – O. R. Mapper Dec 17 '18 at 09:17
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    Though it does give confusion with "Alkohol in Massen", which without the ess-tset to disambiguate can mean either "alcohol in moderation" or "alcohol en masse" ;) – Muzer Dec 17 '18 at 10:45
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    @Muzer I think many people would prefer to parse it as "alcohol in 1 liter glass vessels like the ones used at Oktoberfest". You know, motivated reasoning and all that. – rumtscho Dec 17 '18 at 14:52
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    @Muzer you know the story of that health&safety campaign: “Alkohol – weniger ist besser!” Well, this wasn't considered strong enought, so they changed it: “Alkohol – nichts ist besser!” – leftaroundabout Dec 17 '18 at 22:17
  • I feel personally, that if a pair of homophones are not distinguished phonetically, then there isn't any need to distinguish them orthographically. The odds of one of the words of the pair occurring written down without context is low, and making the spelling unphonetic, or just plain confusing just to distinguish between them when written down feels awfully unnecessary and annoying (cough cough japanese and chinese). – Quintus Caesius - RM Sep 11 '21 at 11:26
  • @QuintusCaesius-RM: Pairs of words spelled with ß vs ss in German are not homophones: they differ in vowel length. – brass tacks Sep 12 '21 at 01:24
  • @brasstacks excuse my ignorance. – Quintus Caesius - RM Sep 12 '21 at 12:51