= Сообщение: 5289 из 12556 ====================================== ENET.SYSOP = От : Michiel van der Vlist 2:280/5555.1 26 Aug 17 18:09:30 Кому : David Rance 26 Aug 17 18:09:30 Тема : Swedish meatballs ... FGHI : area://ENET.SYSOP?msgid=2:280/5555.1+59a1a263 На : area://ENET.SYSOP?msgid=2:203/2+599ff8ea = Кодировка сообщения определена как: CP850 ================================== ============================================================================== Hello David,
On Friday August 25 2017 12:16, you wrote to me:
MvdV>> As you can see in Dutch the accent is used more or less the MvdV>> same as the Umlaut in German.
DR> But without the easier option of being able to render it correctly by DR> the addition of an "e".
"Easier" is in the eye of the user. Accents and umlauts were a problem in the very early days of computing, but that is a long time ago and of short duration. Dutch typewrites always had accents and umlauts, but the very early computers had not. The problem was already taken care of when computers became available to the general public and started to replace typewriters. That was before Fidonet. My personal opinion about the "German solution" is the lazy way out. It was never needed and for me it is not "easiër". It can't be used in Dutch anyway because most combinations wit 'e' are already taken. There never was an official ASCII onlt transliteration for accented and umlauted characters.
MvdV>> In Dutch the diaresis is not an Umlaut, it is used as a trema. MvdV>> To signal that a diphtong like 'oe' is to be pronounced as two MvdV>> different vowels. Noël.
DR> As indeed we use it in English, though less educated or careless DR> people dispense with the dieresis altogether. I had a girl in my choir DR> a few years ago whose name was Chloe (no dieresis). Normally we would DR> spell it Chloë but the chap who kept the choir list insisted on DR> spelling it Chlöe! He didn't speak any foreign languages but tried to DR> be clever by adding the accent somewhere - and getting it wrong and DR> rendering it meaningless!
There you go... :-(
DR> In fact quite a number of English and American people add accents to DR> make it look posh. Not just people but some businesses. Ever heard of DR> the American ice cream maker, Häagen-Dazs? The accent, the double "aa" DR> and the "zs" are there to make it look as though it's some kind of DR> superior Scandinavian ice cream! This from the obituary its founder in DR> the New York Times:
DR> name Häagen-Dazs, wanting it to sound Danish. A map of Scandinavia was DR> printed on its carton. But the name is not Danish, indeed the umlaut DR> does not exist in Danish, and the name means as little in that DR> language as it does in English."
