# f-shape long s



## Pickle Posy

I am just translating a letter written in French in 1902, and the writer seems to use a symbol that looks like an f to mean ss (so _drefier_ is written for _dresser_, _connaifance_ for _connaissance). _I know this happened in pre-19th century English (we call the f shape a "long s"), but have not seen it before in French. Have I understood correctly what is happening here? And can anyone advise how common this would have been in 1902? The writer was French but writing to a Belgian, if that makes any difference.

Thanks.


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## Maître Capello

Hello Pickle Posy! 

Yes, this is definitely ſ (or _ſ_ in italics), the _f_-shape long _s_. However it should be equivalent to a single round _s_, not two.


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## Pickle Posy

Maître Capello

Thanks for the quick reply. You're right, he has in fact written ſs for ss, although not consistently - for instance, he writes _carrossable_ with two round s letters.

In the Wikipedia article you linked to, it says the long s fell out of use, at least in printing, by the Industrial Revolution. So I'm wondering why my writer was still using it in the early 20th century?


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## TitTornade

Hi,
I read many birth, death or marriage certificates from my region (Lorraine, Champagne-Ardennes) and I noticed many _isolated_ _"ſ"_ (_ſ_on) and double "_ſ_s" before 1850, I guess.
I checked randomly what happens around 1900 : I saw no isolated "_ſ_" and I saw that some authors write "ss" and others still write "_ſ_s".


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## Pickle Posy

TitTornade,

Many thanks. That's very helpful. 

Posy


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## berndf

TitTornade said:


> Hi,
> I read many birth, death or marriage certificates from my region (Lorraine, Champagne-Ardennes) and I noticed many _isolated_ _"ſ"_ (_ſ_on) and double "_ſ_s" before 1850, I guess.
> I checked randomly what happens around 1900 : I saw no isolated "_ſ_" and I saw that some authors write "ss" and others still write "_ſ_s".


In Lorraine, could it be German influence that it survived longer? In those days it was still an orthographic fault in German to write a round "s" where a long "_ſ_" belonged.


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## Pickle Posy

That's an interesting point. My writer was from a farming family from Maine et Loire but had lived and worked in Paris, and possibly Marseille, and was corresponding regularly with people in Belgium. I was interested whether the use of the long s in the early 20th century implied anything about him - e.g. that he was unusually well-educated, or poorly-educated, or trying to look well-educated...


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## TitTornade

berndf said:


> In Lorraine, could it be German influence that it survived longer? In those days it was still an orthographic fault in German to write a round "s" where a long "_ſ_" belonged.



Hi,
I'm not sure that people in Lorraine wanted to keep anything form german influence after 1870   (Of course, the minds changed after 1949  )

"_ſ_s" exists also in Ardennes. 
You can have a look on : http://archives.cg08.fr/arkotheque/etat_civil/fond_visu_img.php?ref_id=3773 and check, each year in the beginning of the certificate, whether the word "arrondissement" is written with "ss" or with "_ſ_s".
I imagine the people who wrote that are well-educated, but this village is very small and the people are mainly peasants. 

Pickle Posy : I think it could also depend on the age of the writer. Did he learn to write one or the other "ss"...


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## berndf

TitTornade said:


> I'm not sure that people in Lorraine wanted to keep anything form german influence after 1870


I meant the German part of Lorrain. People there obviously didn't stop writing French (most people in that region were bi-lingual at the time) when they became Germans but being exposed to written German all the time with the long "s" being mandatory could have slowed down the decay of the use of the letter in their French writing, too.



TitTornade said:


> "_ſ_s" exists also in Ardennes.
> You can have a look on : http://archives.cg08.fr/arkotheque/etat_civil/fond_visu_img.php?ref_id=3773 and check, each year in the beginning of the certificate, whether the word "arrondissement" is written with "ss" or with "_ſ_s".
> I imagine the people who wrote that are well-educated, but this village is very small and the people are mainly peasants.


The document covers more than 40 years. Did you find any occurrences for the last few years, i.e. towards the turn of the century? I couldn't.


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## LilianaB

Hi, Berndf. When did they stop wrting the long s in Germany -- was it for all s letters, or just in certain positions? I saw it on my grandfther's birth certificate from 1902 and I was really puzzled. I thought it was a different letter at first.


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## berndf

In German, the long "s" was used in black letter and black letter  derived cursive scripts (the predominant scripts until 1941), where its  use was mandatory where appropriate, but not in Antiqua script. The  change happened implicitly where Hitler decided in 1941 to ban all black  letter (including traditional German cursive) scripts in favour of  Antiqua.


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## LilianaB

Thank you.


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## TitTornade

berndf said:


> I meant the German part of Lorrain. People there obviously didn't stop writing French (most people in that region were bi-lingual at the time) when they became Germans but being exposed to written German all the time with the long "s" being mandatory could have slowed down the decay of the use of the letter in their French writing, too.
> 
> The document covers more than 40 years. Did you find any occurrences for the last few years, i.e. towards the turn of the century? I couldn't.



Berndf : Please consider as a joke what I said about German influence on Lorraine around 1900! Actually I mainly read certificate from the west part of Lorraine  
Perhaps we can notice differences in the Germanic part of Lorraine between the French and German period... It could be interesting to check 

The document I send doesn't reach the 20th century and some occurences appears (eg. p 239 in year 1874: "rempli_ſ_sant", "arrondi_ſ_sement"...). But it seems to depend on the writer : the previous and the next writers (several years before or after) didn't use "_ſ_s".

In another village, in 1889, you can read "arrondi_ſ_sement" on the second line: 

But, the occurence are rare : it depends on the writer as I said...
In 1894, I found that : . It is not clear on the picture (the size is reduced from the original...) but we can read this: "de_ſ_s dessous". The author seems to have written and "_ſ_s" and then corrected it in "ss"...
Besides, I'm sure to have read "_ſ_s" around 1900 yesterday, but as I checked randomly on the certificates, I can't find it again... As you see, it was not so common


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## Pickle Posy

It's interesting to see all this discussion. I followed your lead TitTornade and looked at some _etat civil_ entries for Maine et Loire (where my writer was from) for 1902, and they seemed to use the round ss pretty consistently, in _naissance_ for instance. I couldn't obviously see any examples of _ſs_. But although he was writing in 1902, my man was born in 1829, so perhaps he was just from a different era.


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## francisgranada

Isn't the usage of these two kinds of the letter "s" of Greek origin? See the Greek Sigma : upper case Σ, lower case *σ*, and *ς* in word-final position. 
I have some old Hungarian books from the 17th-18th century where this "f-shape long s" is used as well, though not consequently. The only "rule" I could find is that this "long s" never appears at the end of the words.


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