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

I wrote:

>French has both usages, each of which I surmise the OED calls
>"diaerisis". As has been discussed earlier, it separates vowels:
>
>Noël, maïs /mais/ (vs. mais /mE/)
>
>but is also used as in John's Spanish example:
>
>if the feminine of "ambigu" or "exigu" were written without tréma, it
>would yield "ambigue" (/a~mbig/) and "exigue" (/egzig/). To retain
>pronunciation of the "u", tréma is added:
>
>ambigüe (a~mbigy), exigüe (/egzigy/)
D'oh! This is the same thing, since in both instances, we're
separating the vowels. In the second examples, we're just separating
the "u" from the "e" so that the "u" remains distinct from the "e",
and doesn't give us a word like "figue". I still feel a subtle
difference bewteen the two, but the resident native speaker saw it as
the same logic, which it is. Hence, both diaerisis.

Kou