Re: CHAT: French expressions in English (Re: OT CHAT:Asperger'ssyndrome)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> At 21:48 23/06/00 EDT, you wrote:
> >OH OH I forgot one of my absolute favourites:
> >    _objet trouve_
> >I hope I have that spelled right.
>
> You did, except for the accent (objet trouvé), but I suppose it would be
> written without accent in an English text.
It depends on the publication.  Most any informal/nonelite publications (newsletters,
brochures, comic books, to name just a few) usually don't bother with foreign
diacritical marks of any kind.  Really pretensious publications often keep them;
indeed, until just a few years ago, the _New York Times_ insisted on keeping
the only diacritical mark used in modern times in English, the diaeresis, as
in <coöperate>, which has now fallen into complete abeyance.  There also
seems to be a geographical difference in use.  I noticed last year that while the
umlaut on the Kurdish dissident <Öcalan>'s name's spelling was preserved in
almost all BBC articles on him (the same goes for German Prime Minister Gerhard
<Schröder>), the American press were extremely ambivalent about retaining
them. IMO this is due mostly to Britain's geographical proximity to both of those
men in the news (and thus to their showing up in the news), but it is not impossible
to read cultural meaning into that.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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