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

--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 11:14 ,
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
> > 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(*).
>
> Strictly speaking the double-dot superscript
> diacritic is called _trema_.  The terms
> 'umlaut'
> and 'di(a)eresis' refer to _uses_ of the trema.
>
> English, of course, never uses the trema to
> denote umlaut; the trema in coöperate denotes
> diaeresis.  But this use is, surely, archaic
> now.
It's regular in biology, physiology and medicine
where oö- shows up commonly.

> As for 'trema' - I've rarely seen it in writing
> (in
> English - the term is common enough in French,
> tho
> both languages have borrowed it from Greek) and
> never heard it in speech.
I've never heard the term outside of discussions
on Conlang.

> People talk about the trema as
> 'umlaut' or 'diaeresis' at random according to
> the
> name they first met, with no regard to the way
> it's being used.
It's kind of moot anyway, since the thing is
largely optional and fairly rare.

When we no longer have a need for the thing, the
names for thing usually get lost or confused.


> But, of course, for most Brits
> 'Nöel' is just as good as 'Noël' - it just some
> foreigners'
> "umlaut accent" which doesn't matter one way or
> another.
And in English it really doesn't. Anyway, I'd
prefer the spelling Nowel. Mootens the need for
any class of doololly on either vowel.

Padraic.



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