Digraphic letters (was: Dutch "ij")
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, July 18, 2002, 5:31 |
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On Tuesday, July 16, 2002, at 11:48 , John Cowan wrote:
> =?iso-8859-1?q?Jan=20van=20Steenbergen?= scripsit:
>
>> Of course, you are right. All I wanted to say is it took two hits on the
>> typewriter to produce it. But as a matter of fact, it is one letter,
>> indeed.
>> Just curious: are there other examples in the world's languages of
>> similar
>> behaviour?
>
> Absolutely. Spanish has always treated "ch" and "ll" as single letters
> (despite the recent craven decision by the Royal Academy to change
> traditional sort order, where "cinco" precedes "chile"),
Welsh also treats "ch" and "ll" as single letters. Happily Welsh
dictionaries
still lists words like _cyw_ (chicken), _cywrain_ (skilfull) before _chwa_
(breeze, gust).
> but types
> them as two and capitalizes them as "Ch", "Ll".
So does Welsh :)
Welsh also counts the following as single letters:
dd
ff
ng /N/ [placed between {g} and {h}
ph
rh
th
> Croatian takes the same attitude with "dz" and "dz^", which have
> single-letter correspondents in Cyrillic script.
I wonder how widespread this practice is.
Ray.