Re: internationalization assumption

[Philippe Verdy]

About the French ligatures 'oe' (and 'ae'), I should have noted this 
excellent summary page (in French) on its usage and history:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(typographie)
Note that Latin- or Greek-inherited words use the ligature when the vowels 
are not to be pronounced separately, but with the etymological 'o' not 
vocalized. So it remains only the final 'e' vowel, sometimes pronounced like 
'�', or more recently and very commonly like the digraph 'eu'.

The French page on Wikipedia is more complete than the corresponding English 
page; but the German page contains interesting information about ligatures 
in German or other central european languages.