Random memory

[pne]

When I told my father about Esperanto, he thought it would be silly for a proposed International Auxiliary Language to require unusual diacritics, since that could only hinder its acceptance; using the straight Roman alphabet, with digraphs if necessary, would have made more sense to him.

(Interestingly enough, this was probably less of a problem back in the typewriter era, since you could put non-spacing diacritics such as circumflex accents over any letter you want… which is also, I believe, what accounts for the quaint single-vertical-line and double-vertical-line diacritics found in Marshallese: caused by overtyping an apostrophe or a quotation mark, respectively, over the vowel using a typewriter.)

Comments

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Spin̈al Tap is more satirical than Spiŋal Tap

(; It's been suggested to me that I spelt the band with an ñ, which entirely misses the point...

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Heh... yes, it does somewhat.

You'll have to forgive the rather whimsical turn of mind that led me to this question... you wrote "an ñ" rather than "a ñ" - so how do you say "ñ"? As "n-tilde", or what? For me, it's like trying to work out what form of the definite article one would use in front of the letter ß.

[pne.livejournal.com]

how do you say "ñ"? As "n-tilde", or what?

I'd probably say "n-tilde", though it's possible angharad might have been thinking of the Spanish name for the letter, viz. "eñe" (IIRC).

For me, it's like trying to work out what form of the definite article one would use in front of the letter ß.

Eh? English only has one form of the definite article, at least in writing. Were you thinking of pronunciation ("thuh" vs "thee"), or of the indefinite article?

Then there's things such as "an FAQ" vs "a FAQ" (I prefer the latter, but many people use the former; it depends on whether it's "an eff-ay-queue" or "a fack").

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is what I meant (as in "thuh pee" for the p versus "thee ay" for the a) - although I suppose the indefinite article is just as applicable!

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Ah, much more interesting. I think I would use the latter, because, again, of needing a consonant (in this case 'y') before the name "es-tset".

[angharad.livejournal.com]

"Yay for English and its diphthongs!"

[pne.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'd pronounce |an ß| as /@n Es-tsEt/, since that's the name I give it in my native German; other Germans, though call it a "scharfes S". No consensus even within the language! :)

[angharad.livejournal.com]

You know, I realised after posting that comment that my choice of article might look funny. In Spanish, "ch" (che), "ll" (e-ye), "ñ" (en-ye), and "rr" (errrrrrrre), are actually individual letters in the alphabet. I speak Spanish (although my first language is English). So whenever I use/see a tilde on top of an "n", I call it "enye" in my head. I don't know how, for example, the Portuguese spellings are pronounced, or whether those nasalised vowels (such as "ão") are letters in their own right. Me, for those, I would probably say "tilde a" or "a tilde".

And, in English, it matters that 'es-tset' begins with a vowel, so it's "an ß" isn't it? I confess that my German is atrophied enough that I have no idea about letters' genders. (Unless you mean "beta", in which case "a beta", in English.)

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

As Philip's already pointed out, there is also the common variant "scharfes S"... :)

And yes, it was es-tset I was referring to, not beta. I didn't know what its German name was, since my German is extremely poor. I can say "Guten Tag!" and "Doch!" and "Ich bin ein Berliner!" and not much else.

I am a Danish

[angharad.livejournal.com]

That's funny. My partner took just as much German as I did, but didn't have the same teachers, and I had to teach him "Doch"! Damned handy word, that.

And to sidetrack away from spelling from there, negative questions are fascinating, because of how they can be asked, and how they can be answered. Like, from anime, I've learned that Japanese answers "You didn't do that, did you?" with "yes", rather than "no". I wish I knew which languages do that.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I confess that my German is atrophied enough that I have no idea about letters' genders.

I think all letter names are neuter (das A, das Zett, das Es-Zett, das scharfe S, das S, probably also "das Ö" but I'm so sure there for some reason).

Same in Greek TTBOMK: "to alpha, to vita, to o mikro, to o mega".