Rößlers at
Roesslers.de? The German
language uses 3 diacritic letters (ä, ö, ü)
and one ligature (ß)
additionally to the modern Latin alphabet. Two of them (ö and
ß) are
used in the surname Rößler. Their historic evolution
should be closer
scrutinized. The umlaut (from German um- "around", "transformation" and
laut "sound") "ö" is a special kind of vowel modification.
This change
originated in Middle High German in medieval times. The "o" in the
combination "oe", for example, was pronounced more to the front of the
mouth to accommodate the following "e". This resulted in a higher
sound, which created the so-called umlauts. These changes are typical
for the earlier germanic languages. Later, umlauts acquired a
grammatical function. For instance, the German noun Roß
(horse) becomes
Rösser (horses) in the plural. The origin of the character
lies in a
tiny "e", which was originally written above the "o" to indicate the
vowel change. In handwritings of the Middle Age until end of World War
II, the "e" looked like two tiny strokes (compare the
Sütterlin "e") or
bars. This simplified now to two small dots above the letter. In
international transliteration umlauts are replaced by the underlying
vowel and a following "e"; "ö" becomes "oe". Consider we now
the second
typical letter, which bears a remote resemblance to the Greek letter
beta. But the "ß" is a letter used only in German. It is a
phonetic
circumscription of how the two letters "s" and "z" are pronounced. This
is meant to reflect that this "sharp s" derives from a ligature of the
long or medial "s" and "z". A ligature generally occurs where two or
more letterforms are written as a unit. Ligatures were originally used
by medieval scribes to conserve space and increase writing speed. In
international transliteration "ß" is replaced by "ss". That's
why
Rößler's website will be reached by the URL
www.roessler-bidasio.info.
How to
pronounce
Rößler in German? The
"R" at the beginning is a swallowed "R". To pronounce the umlauted
"ö"
round your lips to the letter "o" and say "ay" instead. It sounds a
little like the vowels in English "burn" or French "feu". The
"ß"
(ess-tsett, if spelled out) should not be confused with the lowercase
Greek letter beta to which it is unrelated. The so called "sharp s"
replaces "ss" in some German words. Pronounce this symbol the same as
you would the letter "s". Also the syllable "ler" at the end is
pronounced the same as you would do it in English. Look at this:
[Røslə]. Do you see phonetic symbols between the square
brackets? This
illustration shows the pronunciation of Rößler
[Roessler] indicated by
the IPA International Phonetic Transcription.