Translation Request

I am unable to find "ruBig" in any of my philatelic dictionaries

That's because it's not a "B" but an sz, roughly ss

russig = sooty
overprint is sooty

I agree. "sooty" (ruBig) would probably indicate "a shade of black"... not black (schwartz) or grey (grau), but somewhere in between.

So in English would it be spelled ruszig or russig?

Russig.

Actually, the overprint is a dull (sooty), or matte black. The other overprint type for this series of 11 stamps is "glaenzend" or shiny black. The Michel Deutschland-Spezial catalog doesn't differentiate the 2 overprint types for the 10 Pf value, so I am assuming they are all sooty black for this stamp. The catalog lists three color types; carmine red, lilac red, and rose.

Back when I was in school in Holland and had German, I was taught that the sign that looks like an upside down 'b' is a "Gothic s" or a double s. "sz" is not used in Germanic languages, just in Slavic languages. The sound is nothing unusual, just a longer "S".

Peter

Well, actually, it's called an esss zet when the character is named in German. It is derived from the ligature of s and z. It's form comes from a need for a terminal s distinct from a beginning or mid-word s (the latter, in the old script, looked more like an f and was also used in English typesetting and writing). It's form comes from that ligature of s and z but it does not represent an s and a z rather, a "sharp s" or "round s".

To Timm's question: if you can achieve the "B" like character (similarities to a Greek Beta) on your keyboard, you use that. That's the proper way to "spell" it. If you don't have that special character available, as Petert4522 says, you substitute double s, not sz. You are substituting for the sound/letter, not for the typesetting ligature that customarily represents that sound/letter.

Since more than one "s" sound exists in German (as also in English and other languages), one needs to specify that it is an extended "s" of a specific type: Not the "zzz" like s-sound of sehen or the sh s-sound of stehen but the (terminal) ess-sound of das, something like the s in "last" in English.

The ASCII code is Alt+225. "ß" "Rußig."

Dan

Great, Dan. Just lowercase the r and we have a winner.