Re: OT: Diacricital marks [Re: Question about "do"]

Mark J. Reed sikyal:

> JC> It's not so simple.  Italian, like Catalan, mostly keeps to the "old
> JC> rules": the grave on low vowels, the acute on high ones.
>
> Ah!  I was not aware of these "old rules".  I take it they were a
> feature of Romance (or whatever you choose to call the last common vulgar
> Latin) before it diverged?
Please do tell, John, since I would be very surprised if there were any
accents that were that old.

> JC> It's also common to use a sort of breve in handwriting.
>
> Handwritten accents seem to follow a rule that basically states
> "as long as there's something over the vowel, it doesn't matter what it is" :)
Romanian basically follows this rule, even though it must distinguish two
different vowels that differ only by their diacritic: |�| (a-circumflex)
and |�| (a-breve, though I wrote a-tilde since I don't have a breve on
this system). What this amounts to, if your lucky, is essentially a macron
to indicate the breve, with some sort of upward curvature on the
circumflex.

> JC> French has the remnants of this system, except that it has u-grave in
> JC> the one word "ou`" to distinguish it from "ou".
>
> And the circumflex is a later French innovation?
It exists (albeit with a wholly different meaning) in Greek, which makes
me think that the Greeks invented it. In Greek, its shape is vaguely
indicative of its meaning, too, since it indicated falling tone and
consists of an acute (high tone) followed by a grave (low tone).

--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"

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