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Re: orthographical question.

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Sunday, April 1, 2001, 0:02
Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

>On Sat, 31 Mar 2001, Frank George Valoczy wrote: > >> Speaking of breves, can anyone explain how it is used in German over "u"? > >Breves are used in German? >I'd love to know about this too. <sigh> One year of college German is >so pitifully inadequate it isn't even funny. But I suppose that's true >for any fragment of language you pick up in a class.>
The only breve-like thing I've ever seen in German is a sloppily written umlaut. During colonial days, Indonesian used e-breve for schwa (vs. {e} for [e, E]). Somewhere in the 40s they switched to {e} schwa vs. {é}, much more sensible since {e} is very frequent, {é} not. Then in 1972 they eliminated all diacritics, so now you just have to _know_ which is which. Hmmph.

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Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>