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From: jack@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: about diacritical marks (danish dynamite)
Message-ID: <6582@boring.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Aug-85 17:34:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: boring.6582
Posted: Sat Aug 17 17:34:54 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Aug-85 06:52:37 EDT
References: <1065@diku.UUCP> <763@mcvax.UUCP> <1070@diku.UUCP> <775@mcvax.UUCP> <642@kvvax4.UUCP> <483@talcott.UUCP> <780@kuling.UUCP>
Reply-To: jack@boring.UUCP (Jack Jansen)
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 24
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL


It seems that the latin alphabet is insufficient to almost all languages,
and that three solutions have been chosen by different
languages:
1. Take a letter that sounds fairly close to the needed letter, and
   put a funny sign on top of it. Example: German umlaut, Swedish
   oA, etc.
2. Take 2 letters that, when pronounced very fast after each other,
   have some similarity to the wanted sound, and decree that, when
   seen together, they sound different from usual. Example: au,ou,eu
   in Dutch, ng in Dutch and English. This has the advantage of not
   needing more letters, but the disadvantage that it creates
   ambiguities: 'engrave' is pronounced as en-grave, not eng-rave.
3. Somebody Else's Problem. This means to just use the letters you
   kind of like for a sound you need, and let other people worry
   about how to pronounce them. As far as I know, English is the only
   language that adopted this solution. Two simple examples of the
   fun this gives : gaol == jail, laughter != slaughter.

Now, anyone know why certain languages chose to use the solutions
they did?
-- 
	Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP
	The shell is my oyster.