> Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 22:49:46 +0200
> From: BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
> At 16:44 +0200 13.6.1999, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> >I'm only aware of one bad ambiguity --- but it's real bad, OTOH:
> >
> > sukkerr=F8r "sugar canes" vs. sukkerroer "sugar beets"
> But I suppose you could write sukkerro'er for the latter? -- at least
> foreign words ending in -a and -o seem to get an apostrophe plural quite
> regularly in Danish.
The singular is sukkerroe (but there's no digraph problem, since the
singular of "r=F8r" is "r=F8r," not "*r=F8").
But the standard orthography does not allow an apostrophe anyway when
the word is 'naturalized' in Danish --- only when the foreign word has
still kept its original pronunciation.
Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marke=
d)