Esszett/Umlaut

I was practicing German spelling and the program gave me the German word Tschüss; ( bye) but, when I spelled it out and used the Umlaut in the letter "ü" then I used the Esszett ß for the ss in the word; the program gave me a red error sign that indicated that I should have used "ss" instead of "ß". Is there a rule in German that the Esszett can't be used following an Umlaut? or could this a mistake in the program? Some people say that I'm to meticulous and maybe it's not so important but, I count all the teeth when I buy a horse. Können Sie mir helfen bitte? Jamand!

Hi Tommy, I don't know all the rules, but I can tell you the lessons and tests aren't always correct. There are a lot of inconsistencies in words with umlauts and esszetts and I have pointed out a few of them.

Hi Byon Yes I kind of notice that, I recon everything man makes has a few bu-gs to work-out. I just have a habit of finding them by chance. I work in the accounting field mostly in reconciliation, finding and fixing other people mistakes, not trying to be perfect, just habit, lol Thanks I knew I could depend on you for the correct answer.

Thanks Tommy. Regarding spelling and use of the esszett I did a little research on the web and learned that Germany has gone through a series of spelling and pronunciation reforms. Seems at one time the plan was to drop the esszett altogether and replace it with double 's'. Also, interesting enough East and West Germany had different spelling of some words, kind of like the U.S. and Canada I suppose. Now esszetts are back. I think, but am not 100 percent sure, they are used where preceded by a word with a long vowel sound. So you will definitely see some discrepancies in printed material prior to 2005 and today.

Hi Guys, 1) ß is spelled as eszett 2) Tschüs can be spelled as Tschüss but never as Tschüß. Look it up in any dictionary. Byron is right. RocketLanguages has not spelled eszett correctly in their lessons and lots of students reproduce the error. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Esszett&redirect=no The usage of ß (eszett) was already answered by Paul: http://members.rocketlanguages.com/your-community/german-grammar/interchangeable-use-of-an-esszett/ In fact in Lesson 1.5, where this character is first introduced (although it appears as early as 1.1 in the vocabulary), they call it esszett, which conflicts with the wikipedia spelling. http://members.rocketlanguages.com/lessons/56 Try doing a Rocket Languages search with Google Search. Use the "site:" keyword and google will find everything you want on the site you pick. Unfortunately I think it may not have access to the secure areas of the site. We have to wait for Rocket Languages to give us a search of their material or you need to paste all of their material into your own document so you can search it. ß site:rocketlanguages.com https://www.google.fr/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%C3%9F+site:rocketlanguages.com Eszett site:rocketlanguages.com https://www.google.fr/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=eszett+site:rocketlanguages.com esszett site:rocketlanguages.com https://www.google.fr/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=esszett+site:rocketlanguages.com