Do you agree with me on the eszett actually being about as unnecessary as the appendix vermiformis ?
To the contrary, East Germany occasionally used the ß to distance itself from Nazism. The East German actress, Katrin Saß, was originally named Sass. Because the East German officials thought that the family name could be construed to be the Nazi military organizations, SA-SS, the name was change to Saß:
"She said the GDR forced to spell her name with a "ß" presumably because "Sass" was associated with the Nazi SA and SS."
For German, the issue is the writing of long vs short vowels. There are four systems:
- Like Finnish where long=double
- Like Dutch where long equals double in closed syllable but single in open syllable.
- Like Norwegian where it's long before single consonant and short befor double consonant.
- Like Hungarian where long vowels get an accent, a diacritic.
German saxon chancelry spelling introduced the number 3 in High-German while Low-German and some regional dialectal centers like High-Alemanic tended towards the number 2.
For the sound /s/, it is only possible to have a single consonant if one invents one, as the spelling s is needed for /z/. Hence the idea of ß. For the sound /x/, no solution was found and the diagramm ch doesn't have a single consonant friend. Same with sch. In early neuhochdeutsch, the length of the syllables moved a little bit, so that some vowels got shortened or lengthened in a regular pattern making the need of single versions for ch and sch almost nihil. There is still the issue of ich pronounced long in the south, though, and technically could be written iech, but it's short in a large northern and central part.
For ss and ß, no such vowel equalization occured, so that the need to have a single and a double was still technically there. How important people feel it is to apply to the sound /s/ the same spelling rule as to other sounds, that is not a linguistical question, I'm afraid.
Answer to your question : I don't care because the choice to make the spelling distinction or not for the sound /s/ is arbitrary. I use ß when there is one on my keyboard, I don't teach it because it is explicitlly asked of teachers not to in the cantons I know, and my students do as they please as long as it is consistent, as with any helvetisms.
I'm already used to it ...
Back in the 1980s and into the 21st century, many tourist destinations in Greece sold tourist guides for the area, mostly translated using a Greek - German dictionary and nothing else. Google wasn't even a name when those translations were done.
The results often were hilarious. Besides the wording on the level of a German or English User's Manual for a far-eastern slow-cooker, there was the problem those guys faced with that pesky eszett. Not knowing what that was about,some typesetters replaced it with a Greek beta, which looked awful in print. Some even mistook it for a capital B and used that, and then there were those typesetters who probably said, "What the f+ck, there are no capitals inside words" (remember, things like interCaps = CamelCaps were very rare back then), so they just replaced them with lower case "b"s.
That resulted in wonderful sentences like, " Genieben Sie die Wanderungen auf grafischen Straben am Meer. " What turned those Straben (= Strassen / Straßen "graphic" is the fact that the Greek adjective "grafikós" can mean both graphic and picturesque.
As for "hobbys" -- Ladys and Gentlemen, I still cringe.
There are two rules in the German language how to handle the ß in the German language.
The Adelungsche Regel: ß is used to imply a voiceless S and to differentiate it from the sounded S. Example :Muse vs. Straße. Also, it's used to help readability in words like Mißstand. - Adelung has a lot of cases, where the ß is mandatory. The Heysesche Regel: ß is used only after long vowels and after diphtongs. Example: Straße, Beißen - Heyse uses a lot less ß.
Now, with that out of the way, here's how the history of the ß went. The German language stuck uniformly to Adelung for the longest time. Austria dabbled with Heyse for a bit in the 19th century, but then figured that that was not the way to go, as - among other things - daß/das mistakes increased.
In Switzerland, they went with Heyse for a bit and then the ß was increasingly phased out in the early years of the 20th century. In the 1920s, the Bundesblatt stopped using it. In the 1930s, cantons started to not teach the ß anymore at schools. Zürich, as the country's biggest canton, stopped teaching it by official decree on January 1st, 1938.
The last bastion of the ß was the NZZ that stopped using it on November 4th, 1974.
The exact reasons for this are unknown, but there are a few speculations: CH's adaptation of a keyboard that needed to cover all three national languages at least in its basics Phonolgy of dialects. Early adoption of Antiqua fonts in CH as opposed to DE and AT Distancing from Nazi Germany Swiss linguists at newspapers theorize that it wasn't any one reason, but a combination of several or all of them.
CH's adaptation of a keyboard - If the French speakers found a space for ç, no reason not to find a place for ß. There is a key just for §/° and one for $/£ for heaven's sake.
Phonolgy of dialects - The norm of the written language and dialect are not interconnected in anyway. Not in Switzerland, not in Austria, not anywhere.
Early adoption of Antiqua fonts in CH - How long does it take to invent the ß in that font? They have it now, so they ended up doing it. And if they wanted a ß, they would have chosen another font. It's a reversion of causality.
Distancing from Nazi Germany - This excuse can be used for everything, and it does. But be sure that the NZZ didn't wait 1974 to distance itself from Nazi Germany. If they meant it seriously with this distancing, they would have learnt French or made a unified Swiss German, which nobody even started to do.
I mean, I'm no expert and if you're an expert, then I'll take your word for it. Elsewise, we're all just speculating.
In the language commission elaborating the reform in 1997, the hope was that simplifying the use of ß by getting rid of one rule (ß instead of ss at the end of a stemm, hence mußte, daß, Schloß etc.) the Swiss would meet half way and adopt the simplified revised rule. It didn't happen. Fact of life and life goes on. No problem.
http://www.sok.ch/files/FA/Eszett_in_der_Schweiz.htm
Thanks for the translation but give your sources.