On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 06:46:56PM +0100, Anders Jackson wrote:
> Tomohiro KUBOTA <tkubota@riken.go.jp> writes:
> > Hi,
> Hi.
> [...]
> > In short, (1) use ASCII character set, this is mandatory,
> > (2) use English, this is should, but I imagine that English
> > is the only language which can fully expressed using ASCII
> > character set.
> 2 isn't quite right. There is at least one English word that have ë
> in it (an umlat-e?). But because i'm not native English, I don't
> remember what that word is. ;-)
Such spellings are allowed, but they are not customary in modern English
typesetting (on either side of the ocean).
When the diaeresis is used in English, it is usually with the French
meaning: it is placed over the second of two adjacent vowels to indicate
a syllable break, where normal pronunciation rules would lead one to
read a single vowel sound (e.g., a diphthong).
All examples I can think of which demonstrate this usage involve
prefixes ending in a vowel; consequently, a hyphen between the two
vowels is often used instead of the diaeresis to mark the syllable
break, or, more commonly, all diacritics are omitted.
Examples:
coöperate
preëmpt
... but good luck finding either of those spellings with dict, or
anywhere on your Debian system. ;)
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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