On Wed, 2009-07-29 at 10:12 +1200, Brenda Wallace wrote: > Über == uber == ueber > (Is it only German speakers who use umlauts?)
Yes and no. They're only called "Umlauts" in German, but the marks are used in other languages too. In English they're called diaereses. (Some would argue that the umlaut and diaeresis are different things, but in Unicode they're represented by the same characters.) It is used in various romance languages. I've just returned from a holiday in Catalonia and can confirm that both Castilian and Catalan (two languages common in that region) make occasional use of it. Even English does. Although rarely seen now, it was once common to use a diaeresis over the second letter in a vowel pair to indicate that the second vowel is to be pronounced separately from the first. e.g. reënact should be pronounced re-enact, and not reen-act. While this usage has dropped off in recent years, naïve is still often written thus, and it's common to see the diaeresis make its appearance in certain proper names like Zoë and Chloë. The diaeresis is also needed to write the names of three famous British female authors: the sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. -- Toby A Inkster <mailto:[email protected]> <http://tobyinkster.co.uk> _______________________________________________ Laconica-dev mailing list [email protected] http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman/listinfo/laconica-dev
