Phake Nick wrote, > ... and it is not possible for e.g. a regular American > user using Windows to simply type them out, at least not > without prior knowledge about these umlauts.
Regular American users simply don't type umlauts, period. Eccentric American users needing umlauts, such as foreign language students or heavy metal enthusiasts, generally find an easy way. Practically everybody knows how to search the web. Earlier in this thread, Shriramana Sharma wrote, > Rejecting the digraph method (which is probably the > simplest) doesn't have much meaning because they have > different sounds in different languages all the time > like ch in English and German. Any Kazakh/Qazaq student ambitious enough to study a foreign language such as English is already sophisticated enough to easily distinguish differing digraph values between the two languages. English speakers face distinctions such as the difference between the "ch" in "chigger" versus "chiffon" daily without any apparent danger of confusion. With so much push-back, along with technical objections, hopefully the government will reconsider the apostrophe situation and go with digraphs or diacritics.