Date: 25 Mar 1999 02:56:29 +0100 From: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Umlauts Message-ID: <7dc54d$g96$1@mips.rhein-neckar.de> References: <m10Pcj0-000WyPC@mips.rhein-neckar.de> <199903241835.TAA00813@yedi.iaf.nl>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Wilko Bulte <wilko@yedi.iaf.nl> wrote: > > [ German umlauted vowel -> vowel + 'e' substitution ] > > > I don't think other languages use anything like this, > > Wrong. The Dutch also use the Umlaut, but we call it a trema (IRRC). Jörg's line didn't refer to the umlaut sign itself but rather to the German practice of substituting vowel + 'e' for an umlauted vowel if that character isn't available, e.g. "Jörg" -> "Joerg". Yes, the trema is widely used. Originally from Greek, it appears in French, Spanish, conservative English, etc. The umlaut sign also appears in Swedish, Finnish, Turkish, etc. Strictly speaking, trema aka diaeresis and umlaut sign are different diacritics and don't necessarily share precisely the same glyph, but since even the Unicode people don't differentiate the two, insisting on this fine point is probably moot. The trema is used to indicate that two neighboring vowels are pronounced separately. The umlaut sign, which historically derives from a superscript 'e', indicates a fronting of the base vowel. (And before a Swede pipes up, yes, I know that (å) ä ö are treated as separate letters in Swedish.) -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de LinuxTag '99 - 26./27. Juni, Uni Kaiserslautern - http://www.linuxtag.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?7dc54d$g96$1>