Re: R: Re: R: orthographical question.

Ferenc Valoczy wrote:
>On Sat, 31 Mar 2001, John Cowan wrote:
>
> > Frank George Valoczy scripsit:
> >
> > > Speaking of breves, can anyone explain how it is used in German over
>"u"?
> >
> > As far as I know it is just a fast way of writing diaeresis/umlaut.
> >
>
>That's the thing...it's wasn't. Umlaut was with a tilde, this was clearly
>a breve, and in a place where you wouldn't have umlaut, example the u in
>flugzeug (second u that is).
This is very interesting. I studied German for five years, and never saw
anything like it. If we discount French and other loan-words, the only
diacritics I've ever seen in German is the diaeresis (two dots marking
umlaut) and the small superscript "e" (also marking umlaut - severely
archaic nowadays). I'd be very happy to hear more about this ...

                                                        Andreas

PS In Swedish, many writers simplify the diaeresis as a macron. Could cause
some trouble for foreigners that think the macron marks length ...
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