On Fri, 16 Feb 2001, Gene Mechtly wrote:
> ...What is the name for a circle over a vowel if not "umlaut"?
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2001, Bill Potts wrote:
> > There is no umlaut over the A in angstrom, Gene. It's a unique
> > Swedish/Norwegian letter (a with a circle over it -- pronounced "aw")...
Bill,
This will confirm your statement on *a(circle)* in angstrom.
A visiting professor here from Sweden, Karl a(circle)stro(umlaut)m, tells
me that Swedish treats *a(circle)* as a unique character. The circle is
*not* recognized in Swedish as a diacritic (a diacritical mark), although
reference books in English list the circle as a diacritic along with
cedilla, tilde, diaeresis (umlaut) etc.
Karl tells me that some of his relatives in the US have changed
the spelling of their name to "Ostrom" to preserve the sound of A(circle)
and have dropped the umlaut.
Gene.
