Notes & Asides.(Letter to the Editor)

-- Memo to NR Lexicographers:

We are swamped by your resourceful answers to the question posed by Mr. John Stephenson Jr. in the Sept. 2 issue, as well as other questions touched on. In that issue, we published a small chart submitted by Mr. Loring Emery, but some questions remained.

A short answer was given by Fred Richman of Boca Raton, Fla., who wrote, "I would guess that the letter that looks sort of like a Greek beta is a German double s, the one character that carried over from the old orthography. I saw it very recently in an article in English by a German who used it to spell 'Gauss.'" And Gary Gabbard of Independence, Mo., elaborated that "It is pronounced 'ess-zett,' with the 'z' pronounced like the 'ts' in rats."

We are indebted to others who answered, explained, improvised, and left us with the most valuable repository on the subject this side of the British Museum.

Thanks to: Adel Sanchez of Arlington, Va., Horst Brakel (yet again) of New York, N.Y., Stephen Andrew of Pasadena, Calif., Donald Poundstone of Temecula, Calif., William Hardin of San Diego, Calif., Brian Bruckno of Waynesboro, Va., Laszlo Vesei of Niles, Mich., Andrew Love of Columbia, Md., Roger Jones of Broomall, Pa., Charlotte Anderson of Wayne, Pa., James Walsh and Zoe Lang, both of Cambridge, Mass., Mark Lee of Austin, Tex. (who came to his knowledge "through my love of Mahler's 8th Symphony, the second movement of which is a setting, slightly abridged, of the last scene of Part 2 of Goethe's Faust"), Stanley Taylor of Greenfield, Mass., Aaron Doyle of East Hartford, Conn., Raymond Heisler of Chicago, Ill., Lewis Hendrixson of Crofton, Md., Yolanda Thomas of Harper Woods, Mich., Soren Laursen of Allendale, N.J., Col. Robert Powers of Shreveport, La., William Muff of San Rafael, Calif., Timothy Albers of Baldwyn, Miss., Robert Reece of Forest Grove, Ore., Thomas Comerford of Dallas, Tex., Dr. K. A. Skapa of Denver, Colo., G. J. Szemler of Lake ...