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