Jan 12, 2018 - 6:03 AM
in reply to rockoyster
>> I am now embarrassed on two (more) counts
No need to be! Only people who know German would know about the capitalisation of nouns (and it takes a while to remember to write them with capitals when you are first learning, even after you know).
And even a lot of people who have learnt German wouldn't know about the Swiss use of ss instead of ß.
If you are wondering why the Swiss don't use ß, you might find this article interesting:
Switzerland and Liechtenstein
The 'ß' character was gradually abolished in Switzerland and Liechtenstein from the 1930s onwards, and has now been completely replaced by 'ss'. It has been suggested that the increasing usage of typewriters has been a cause of the disappearance of 'ß'. As Swiss typewriters could be used by the country's German, French, Italian and Rumantsch speakers, keyboard space was limited if keys for all of the accented characters used in these languages were to be included and there was no room for a 'ß' key. After the Neue Zürcher Zeitung became the last Swiss German newspaper to stop using 'ß' in 1974, the character now only appears in a few publications that are aimed at the German-speaking market as a whole rather than at the domestic Swiss market.
joycep.myweb.port.ac.u k/abinitio/alphabet/um lautsz.html
Alpenrose