From owner-freebsd-chat Wed Mar 24 18:30:19 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from news-ma.rhein-neckar.de (news-ma.rhein-neckar.de [193.197.90.3]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5682A14E78 for ; Wed, 24 Mar 1999 18:30:16 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de) Received: from mips.rhein-neckar.de (uucp@localhost) by news-ma.rhein-neckar.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with bsmtp id DAA08728 for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Thu, 25 Mar 1999 03:29:56 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de) Received: by mips.rhein-neckar.de id m10PzNo-000WyUC (Debian Smail-3.2.0.101 1997-Dec-17 #2); Thu, 25 Mar 1999 02:56:32 +0100 (CET) From: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) Subject: Re: Umlauts Date: 25 Mar 1999 02:56:29 +0100 Message-ID: <7dc54d$g96$1@mips.rhein-neckar.de> References: <199903241835.TAA00813@yedi.iaf.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Wilko Bulte 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