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From: tmb@talcott.UUCP (Thomas M. Breuel)
Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.text
Subject: Re: about diacritical marks (danish dynamite)
Message-ID: <483@talcott.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 23:12:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: talcott.483
Posted: Wed Aug  7 23:12:38 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Aug-85 03:34:28 EDT
References: <1065@diku.UUCP> <763@mcvax.UUCP> <1070@diku.UUCP> <775@mcvax.UUCP> <642@kvvax4.UUCP>
Organization: Harvard University
Lines: 49
Xref: linus net.nlang:3161 net.text:482

In article <642@kvvax4.UUCP>, esa@kvvax4.UUCP (Esa K Viitala) writes:
> In article  andersa@kuling.UUCP (Anders Andersson) writes:
>   >Just for anyone's information, here is the Swedish alphabet also:
>   >   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V (W) X Y Z oA "A "O
>   >Note the different ordering in the end. 
>
> In Norwegian the ordering is the same as in Danish:
>   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V (W) X Y Z AE /O oA
> but Norwegians treat double A (or double a) as oA (oa), which 
> causes some additional problems to the sorting algorithm.  

German has special characters for the vowel combinations 'ae', 'oe',
'ue', and 'sz'. These were introduced as a matter of convenience in
handwriting: the first three combinations ('Umlaute') are written
as the first vowel with two small parallel lines on top (contracted
to dots in printed matter), which is actually a small script 'e'.
The consonant combination 'sz' is written as a 'beta' like character,
which is a contracted form of the script combination of 's' and 'z'.

In dictionaries, the umlaute are either found under the corresponding
vowel, or under the corresponding vowel combinations. They are never
listed separately. Likewise, for dictionary purposes, 'sz' is treated
as 'ss'.

It is considered acceptable in informal writing to spell out
umlaute and to re-place the 'sz' character by 'ss' if the special
characters are not available. (It is a sign of lack of knowledge,
when, as I have seen quite frequently in texts prepared by speakers
of English, the umlaute are replaced by plain vowels. This is
annoying and hard to read!)

Personally, I think the introduction of the umlaute and the 'sz'
into German print was a mistake: they do not improve readability;
there function is at most to make the print look nicer, much as
letter combinations like 'ft' in certain English typefaces. I
sincerely hope that they will disappear from the common written
language. On the other hand, compared to Danish, Swedish, or Finnish,
German at least does not have problems with ordering or representation
in standard Roman letters. It is possible to write readable German
without the use of diacritical marks, without special characters,
and without changing the dictionary order in doing so.

Diacritical marks, contracted letters, and special characters are
not a sign of cultural identity -- they are annoying leftovers from
a time in which people used to do most of their writing with a pen
(or a brush, on the other side of the world). Let's hope they'll
soon get out of fashion!

						Thomas.