Re: German+Hungarian question

On 9/3/05, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
> 
> 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.


Ah, indeed! I've seen this a few times. But about which came first - I know
things developed this way, but my description was intended to be 
synchronic. I would be surprised to hear that users of German think
"ah, there's meant to be an 'e' after this 'u' - I'll just write it above 
the 'u'
(in this conventionalised manner)"! 


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
(Try to write 'Aluminium' in this font -- it's hilarious!)



Sütterlin is insane! I've seen similar typefaces in the 'how to write
German cursively' section of old manuals. A couple of times some
some-autonomous and not-really-paying-attention part of my brain
has seen this and though - 'huh? German in Cyrillic?!'

**Henrik
> 
Stephen
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