Re: Orthographic miscellanea (was: Chinese Romanization etc)

On 9 Sep 2004 Ray wrote:

> [...]
  Finally we are in accord.

> But the fact that Pinyin renders palatal glides in codas as |i| should
> make it clear that |y| is not a glide here, but part of a graphy whereby
> |yu| = [y].
  It is true and I do not want to argue with you, but in another
syllogism (i.e. in mine), the solution can be another. E.g. when
|u| occurs in VV sequence (V = vowel or glide), it always denotes a
glide.


> One German visitor who stayed with us several years ago told me that
> |ä|, |ö| and |ü| should be written as |AE|, |OE| and |UE| when writing
> in block capitals. I don't know whether this is universally true or just
> a habit of hers.
  I do not know the German way of handwriting but originally a
small |e| was used instead of the umlaut (trema, diaeresis) as an
accent (in Hungary until the middle if 18th century; in Germany,
too, but I do not know the date of its ceasing).  This is the
historical reason of interchangeability of |ö| ~ |oe|, |ü| ~ |ue|
and in German |ä| ~ |ae| as well (i.e. diacritic was written either
on the base letter or after it in line; cf. Greek usage on iota
substriptum vs. adscriptum).
  In my Slovak-Hungarian-German dictionary from 1871, typesetted
German capitals have no accent but they are replaced by digraphs
|Ae|, |Oe| and |Ue| (|e| is lowercase).  However in a German-French
dictionary from 1929, diacritical mark is used also on capitals.  I
have a sample chart of "Gothic" current handwriting of Ludwig
Sütterlin.  It was thought in schools in Germany between 1915-1941.
 In this script captitals had accent (however in form of double
acute instead of double dots).
  According to the above, it seems that accents were used on German
capitals from the beginning of 20th century, but it is possible
that digraphs survived until now in special applications and/or in
usage of special (cultural) groups.  (N.B. Neither of my above
examples was black capital, but typesetted and cursive handwriting;
and they were
all "Gothic".)