Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)
| From: | Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 19:01 |
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At 04:43 22.10.2003, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:
>I never liked umlauts. Even when they're
>appropriate in English (coöperate, etc.).
Srictly speaking an umlaut as used in German,
Swedish, Finnish, Estonian or Hungarian (I'm
sure I'm forgetting someone) is technically
nòt the same thing as an English diëresis,
although I'll grant they look deceptively
similar(*). And umlauts usually distinguish
words in a way much more crucial than diëreses.
You can always write _co-operate_ whereas
_höna_ is a 'hen', while _hona_ is a female
of any sub-human species.
FWIW laughing or grinding your teeth over
all those URLs and mail addresses with omitted
diacritics is a national pastime in Sweden.
One reason I don't have _Jonsson_ in my mail
address is/was that people thought my surname
to be _Jönsson_, which it ain't.
>Plus, I
>always have to look up the codes, whereas I have
>the ups, downs and chapeaux memorised.
Can't you use/define key sequences?
I have a cheat-sheet if you or anybody else is
interested:
<http://www.melroch.se/charnos.txt>
(*) Umlauts used to be small superscript _e_s.
This was common in Fraktur fonts and not unknown
in Roman. Perhaps the change wasn't all that
lamentable, but a distinction wàs lost.
/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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