> Hi!
>
> caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> writes:
>> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Mulraney
>>
>> >In any case, the German substitution of following "e" for umlaut
>> seems
>> >to be peculiar among writing systems that I know of, and I guess it
>> >only arose because German words are occasionally written in this
>> >fashion even when umlauts are available, by native users. So the
>> >method is well known among Germans.
>>
>> As I understand it, it is rather the umlaut substituting for the "e."
>
> Exactly, and sometimes Fraktur fonts provide umlauts written as small
> 'e' above the vowel.
>
>> The German cursive "e" used to look something like a cursive "n" and
>> came to be written over the vowel. ...
>
> Ah! Right! I always wondered how the glyph came about as the printed
> 'e' does not look similar. That's right, in German cursive
> (Sütterlin), the 'e' is very similar to two strokes:
>
>
http://www.peter-doerling.de/Lese/Alphabet.htm