Comment by ppseafield | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ppseafield | Hacker News Reader

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That's the same point though - it's just as "wrong" to match 'ß' twice in Schlu[ß][sz]ene as it is to match 'a' once in [Ä]mpel.

Admittedly German isn't my first language. But it seems odd to be permissive in one case, but more restrictive in the other. In my experience there are two cases for searching: exact matches, like you'd expect an editor's find and replace, and more permissive searches, where you might expect to skip through several matches to find what you're looking for. In this second case, what's the advantage of being more exclusive in one case, then less exclusive in the other? Why not have a more permissive default (as mentioned by the other user's reply regarding Firefox's configurable search), even if it's technically incorrect?

Because the ß == ss case is special in that there are numerous words that can be written both ways correctly, there are numerous words that can be written both ways sometimes and often the meaning depends on whether the most common form is written with ss or ß. And Swiss German allows replacing ss for ß as a normal way of writing everything.

Whereas for umlauts ä, ö and ü, the forms with ae, oe and ue are always "emergency replacements", even the Swiss use äöü very frequently (though not always). Also, there are almost never ambiguities when replacing ä, ö, ü -> ae, oe, ue. Yet there are very frequent ambiguities when replacing ä, ö, ü -> a, o, u, because singular/plural, conjunctive and other forms are derived that way and sometimes there are just different words that only differ in one vowel being an umlaut.

So there is a difference in the chance of being wrong when picking one form of a word for another possibly equivalent one. When you do ss == ß, you are often correct. When you do ä, ö, ü == ae, oe, ue, you are almost always correct. When you do ä, ö, ü == a, o, u, you are almost always wrong.

> Swiss German allows replacing ss for ß

requires, not just "allows".

> even the Swiss use äöü very frequently

I can't think of any case where Germans would use one of these and German speaking Swiss would not. But as another Swiss peculiarity, some of our words contain "üe", e.g. "Üetliberg", "gmüetlich".

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