Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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

From:Adam Walker <carrajena@...>
Date:Thursday, October 23, 2003, 22:44
--- Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...> wrote:
> On Thursday, October 23, 2003, at 10:25 PM, Adam > Walker wrote: > > > --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote: > >>> FWIW laughing or grinding your teeth over > >>> all those URLs and mail addresses with omitted > >>> diacritics is a national pastime in Sweden. > >> > >> I'm afraid most of my fellow countrymen seem to > >> regard diacritics as optional ornaments used by > >> foreigners for no good purpose. My wife > gallantly > >> tries to show generations of schoolkids that > French > >> è and é have _different_ sounds - the accents are > >> not just fancy decoration to be ignored. > >> > > > > Oh, I'm quite familiar with that attitude. My > > students in Taiwan felt the same way about dotting > i's > > crossing t's distinguishing between e's and o's or > > between n's and h's. It was all quite unnecessary > > foreigner foolishness. > > > > Adam > > > > Actually, i now feel that the dots on lowercase I's > and J's are > extraneous ornaments. I learned this attitude from > a Spanish teacher > of mine, in fact, and got used to it when using pens > that didn't make > dots very well. Now i only dot my |i|s and |j|s > when my handwriting is > so bad that they can be confused with other letters > - usually |e| for > |i| and |g| for |j|.
With my students it was usually their i's and l's which became indistinguistable. E merged with o. G's sometimes, but not frequently, looked like y's. Oh and I dare you to tell their a's from their u's or their capital U's from their V's. Adam
> > > -Stephen (Steg) > "If you do not like the image in the mirror > do not break the mirror, break your face" > ~ Old Persian proverb, quoted re Afghanistan > by Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid
===== Il prori ul pa&#38621;veju fi dji atexindu mutu madji fached. -- Carrajena proverb