>From the keyboard of Yanick Champoux [12.01.08,18:50]:
> Chris Dolan wrote:
> > On a major tangent, have others noticed the resurgence of the umlaut in
> > printed English? I keep seeing things like coöperation or coördinates --
> > particularly in Technology Review, but in other publications on occasion
> > too. Is that because it's *supposed* to be spelled that way, but ASCII and
> > the typewriter have suppressed that spelling for my lifetime?
> >
>
> A quick use of Google-fu unearthed a blog entry
> http://www.dwelle.org/archives/2007/01/05/whats-with-all-the-umlauts/, which
> in turn pointed to the page
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/profirst/d.htm that says:
>
> *dieresis* or *diæresis *A diacritical mark (* ¨ *) optionally used in
> English, oftentimes replaced by a hyphen. In English, the dieresis is used on
> a second identical vowel to indicate a change in pronunciation of that vowel
> or indicate it is pronounced in a separate syllable. It is sometimes referred
> to as an « umlaut » when used with a single character or in a « diphthong. »
> Examples: reëlecting, reëncoding, coöperation, coördination.
Actually the term "umlaut" in german denotes a "shifted" vowel. If you do
a transition from "u" -> "e" biased towards "i" and stopping in the middle,
you have the "ü", which can be written as diphtong also: "ue". The "e" in
"ue" was often placed above the "u" in old german writing (where the "e"
was written like "n", but with a sharp bend instead of a curve before the
last falling stroke). The four strokes necessary for that "e" were reduced
to two, and those to dots, hence the two points above the "ü".
So, the umlaut is a shortened form of a "diphtongy" denoting a shifted vowel,
and *not* a diaeresis ("ue" is not a diphtong, but an umlaut ;-)
Ö--gg-
--
_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo. G°\ /
/\_¯/(q /
---------------------------- \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s,/,($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e,e && print}
