Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 21:45:10 +1000, Tristan Mc Leay <kesuari@...>
wrote:
> Personally, I have a re-mapped keyboard that lets me use a compose key
> so I can type [menu], ['], [a] and get á or [menu], [a], [a] and get å
> or [menu], [a], [e] to get æ, but most people don't know how to do
> things like this (and anyway, Windows US-International gets in the way;
> last time I used it, typing <"and> was difficult because you had to type
> <""and>, otherwise you'd get <änd>). I do this because (a) I want to be
> able to type foreign languages and my conlang properly/easily and
> (b) using accents in English is *quaint* (some people say it's pedantic;
> some people might even do it because it satisfies some PC notion of
> correctness, but I've never met one who claims it!).
Pedantry can take you far, but I don't think it can account for
everything: there seems to be an unspoken rule commonly [but not
standardly] held that if a foreign word is spelled the same as an English
word, it is "better" for the English word to carry whatever diacritics the
original had, even if you ignore them in speech: e.g., write "Zürich" even
if you say [zurik] (as opposed to something starting in [tsy]...).    It
may not be PC, but it is hyperC at any rate--*pedantically* it must be
Zurich. :p

[Barbarisms such as "Münich" are right out.]


	*Muke!
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