Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Phillip Driscoll wrote:

> Adam Walker wrote:
> >
> > It grates.  Sorta like the increasingly common
> > spelling of cafe as c-a-f-e-'. Yes, with an apostrophe
> > at the end rather than no mark at all or an acute over
> > the e.
>
> Back in the 1970s, I used to print business cards on an
> old press in my garage. Several people ordered cards
> from me to advertise their services doing macramé. They
> always spelled it m-a-c-r-a-m-e-' with an apostrophe
> (which I corrected when I set the type).
There's a café on my way home from the train station. It's apparently
called Socrate's Café, but they have so many different ways of setting the
apostrophe and acute that I'm not sure---including using an acute accent
for the apstrophe (where the apostrophe should be) and a (curved)
apostrophe for the acute (where the acute should be). They never have
<Cafe'>, though. Mostly either <Cafe> or <Caf'e>.

> Over the years, I've become amazed at the number of
> people who have a four-year college degree, but have
> never taken as much as one semester of a foreign
> language in either college or high school. Invariably
> they believe that learning another language simply
> consists of memorizing long lists of corresponding
> words with no thought that the grammars might be
> different.
Really? Here (Victoria Australia) it's compulsory to do a foreign language
for some of secondary school (and I think all of primary school, I haven't
met anyone who didn't).

--
Tristan.

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