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Re: Trema (was: French spelling scheme)

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Friday, May 4, 2001, 18:15
Raymond Brown wrote:


> The trouble is, of course, a-umlaut and u-umlaut are also commonly used to > mean 'a with trema' and 'u with trema', and I've certainly come across > i-umlaut used to mean 'i with trema' where, of course, no umlaut is > involved - it's diaeresis! Ach y fi!
Exactly. "So this o-umlaut is here because of i-umlaut" is a sentence I've actually (more or less) heard.
> English: Brontë /brQnti/ (a surname)
This is a bit of a synthetic example: Patrick Brunty, from Ireland, changed his name to "Brontë" because he thought it looked niftier; he then passed it to his daughters, Charlotte, Anne, and Emily. More usual English examples are "coöperate" and "naïve", although "co-operate" or even "cooperate" (shudder, obviously /kup@reit/!) and "naive" are far more common nowadays.
> As for why the Hellenist Greek grammarians used a double-dot, I don't know.
I don't think anyone does. -- There is / one art || John Cowan <jcowan@...> no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein