[Way OT] dieresis

Tue Mar 02, 2010 6:49 pm   

D Yuniskis wrote:

Unicode makes no difference between the two cases :)


Unicode has ÿ (U+00FF) and CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZHE WITH DIARERESIS
(U+04DD); the bases of both are not vowels as far as I know...


Stefan (who usually uses a hyphen to separate ambiguous words,
because it also works for other kinds of ambiguities)

Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:26 pm   

Stefan Reuther wrote:

Unicode is just a catalog of *glyphs*. They have no "meaning".


Y is often a semi-vowel. Does "ZHE" qualify as a "consonant"?
The very nature of diaresis is that it applies to vowels (?).

I was asking about umlaut, though...


--don (who loves using asterisks, commas, bangs and other
assorted textual decorations :> )

Tue Mar 02, 2010 9:52 pm   

D Yuniskis wrote:

It depends. We have A, Α, and �, which have the same glyph and different
meaning. And we have things like non-breaking spaces of all sorts, which
have no glyph and just meaning....


My (long ago) Russian class didn't tell me anything about CYRILLIC
LETTER ZHE WITH DIARERESIS, but CYRILLIC LETTER ZHE was a consonant
(it's about the same sound as the 'sh' in 'English').


The only "other" umlaut I know besides the German ones is a cyrillic
one, Ñ‘ (CYRILLIC LETTER YO), but as far as I can tell, using the cute
little dots isn't mandatory. Now does this make it more an umlaut
(because the original 'e' sound changes into an 'o' sound), or more a
diaeresis (because it's just a parsing aid telling you how to pronounce
a word...)? :-)


Stefan

Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:32 am   

D Yuniskis wrote:

spell out the implied expression.
**
BTW, from the "sound", one might think that "dieresis" is a term for
a medical procedure...

Wed Mar 03, 2010 8:56 am   

On 02/03/2010 18:49, Stefan Reuther wrote:

I don't know about Cyrillic letters, but "y" is considered a vowel in
some languages, such as Norwegian. And in Swedish, ä and ö are not
considered as "a with an umlaut" and "o with an umlaut", but are
individual letters in their own right, with their own place in the alphabet.

Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:16 am   

In article <4b8e164c$0$2023$8404b019_at_news.wineasy.se>,
david_at_westcontrol.removethisbit.com says...

Also Y is often classed as a special case vowel in English for words such
as -

by
gym
rhythm

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Wed Mar 03, 2010 3:10 pm   

El 02/03/2010 21:52, Stefan Reuther escribió:


In Spanish we use ü, and call it "u with dieresis"

I don't know if it should be considered a diaeresis or an umlaut by
(your) definition, though. Judge by yourself:

Agüero sounds like ah-GWEH-roh
Aguero would sound like ah-GEH-roh

--
Saludos.
Ignacio G.T.

Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:32 pm   

On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:24:27 -0700, D Yuniskis wrote:


Crossword clue:

"Act together to pay for making barrel (9)"


<Spoiler space>

























cooperate

--
"Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference
is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more
durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it."
(Stephen Leacock)

Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:38 pm   

Hi Stefan,

Stefan Reuther wrote:

Yes, my point was that Unicode just describes the glyphs
("marks on paper") and doesn't try to ascribe meaning to
any of them. E.g., U+0308 describes that diacrytical mark
altenately as:
- double dot above (umlaut)
- Greek dialytika
- double derivative
- diaresis

I guess the first question is: what is the name for the
"two dots above" which embeds *no* meaning as to usage
or interpretation? E.g., I always understood diaeresis to
mean "pronounce this as an additional syllable" and
umlaut to be "change the *sound* typically associated
with this (vowel)".

Are either/both of these "bad assumptions" on my part?


So, this is a case where you *can* put it on a consonant.
Now, does that usage fall under my interpretation of the
role of "diaraesis"? Or, does the description "SMALL LETTER
ZHE WITH DIARESIS" take liberties with the term "diaraesis"?
Or, is my interpretation of the term incorrect and "diaraesis"
is actually the name for "two dots above"?

:>


<shrug> You really have to wonder the sorts of folks who
make a *career* out of this sort of thing! I've a tough enough
time dealing with my "native tongue"...

Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:35 am   

On Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:26:11 -0700, D Yuniskis <not.going.to.be_at_seen.com> wrote:


Do your interobangs get in your eyes?

Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:33 am   

Op Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:38:57 +0100 schreef D Yuniskis
<not.going.to.be_at_seen.com>:

"Properly speaking, the terms diaeresis and umlaut are not
interchangeable, though speakers frequently use the term umlaut to refer
to a diaeresis."
- http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diaeresis

But if you use "trema", it can mean either.



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Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:52 am   

On 01/03/2010 22:58, D Yuniskis wrote:

<rant>

For people using Windows with English-language keyboard layouts, it is
extremely inconvenient to make proper use of diacritical marks of any
kind - thus people generally don't bother. I have no idea why there is
such a limitation here - after all, with non-English keyboard layouts in
Windows you have easy access to the more common marks even when they are
not part of your language (on my Norwegian keyboard, I can easily write
naïve). And of course on Linux, you typically have far more
combinations directly available, and support for a "compose" key if you
need it.

The upshot of this your average English-only Windows-only computer user
has little idea about how to get non-Ascii characters into a document,
and generally does not bother.

Word processors (in particular, a certain well-known word processor from
a certain well-known software company) have greatly reduced the quality
of typesetting in general. Few people seem to understand fundamentals
such as consistent use of spacing and fonts, and for some unfathomable
reason, word processors don't automate these rules (TeX and LaTeX have
done it for a couple of decades - it's not /that/ hard to implement).
Try asking your company's technical writers if they understand the
difference between a hyphen, an en-dash, and an em-dash!

</rant>

Thu Mar 04, 2010 6:49 pm   

D Yuniskis wrote:

Wikipedia claims "diaeresis" coming from Greek diaíresis: "taking
apart", so whereas the "di" might mean "two", the remainder certainly
doesn't mean "dots" :-)


Stefan

Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:48 pm   

D Yuniskis wrote:

Ünited Stätes Toughens Image With Umlauts

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/32404

Thu Mar 04, 2010 7:53 pm   

Hi David,

David Brown wrote:

That goes to the point I was making -- that these "old"
adornments are just no longer used.

E.g., when *writing* (as with pen and paper) "naive", you can
*easily* put two dots over the 'i' -- yet how often do you see
it done? In the DSw, *some* folks will still observe the
use of "~n" where needed -- no doubt a consequence of the
Hispanic influence there.

(US) English seems to be shedding these decorations except
for artsy-fartsy corporate use in which the vendor tries to
look "less commonplace" by misspelling their name and adding
silly accents/diacryticals/pronunciation marks to "look cool".


Ditto Solaris as "compose" has a key dedicated.


I contend that they aren't aware of the "need". How many know how
(when) to use a semicolon?


I have been quite happy, in general, with FrameMaker (and would
highly recommend it to folks who do any significant amount of
DTP -- I even use it for correspondence). But, it requires
magic incantations for most of the "special characters". E.g.,
ESC <space> m em space
ESC <space> n en space
ESC <space> 1 '0' space
ESC <space> h non-break space
Ctrl-Q Shft-q em dash
Ctrl-Q Shft-p en dash
ESC - h non-break hyphen

Some would argue these to be a bit more intuitive than trying
to commit to memory their Unicode equivalents. <shrug> Note
that the "no break" variants are "application specific" so I
can cut them some slack, there.

It, however, falls down in several areas that, to me, seem to
be no-brainers. E.g., it should allow me to automatically apply
a particular character format to certain "character combinations"
(e.g., "a priori", "etc.", "e.g.", "i.e.") instead of forcing me
to do this with "Find and Replace".

It also has some little bugs that creep up when you try to play
tricks to coerce certain layouts "automatically".

Ventura Publisher was much easier to trick into doing what you
wanted -- though you had to think as a programmer would and
modify settings in predictable ways to force the layout engine to
put things where you want them.

I had one layout for a "pictorial" table of contents in which
pictures of screen shots were annotated with short commentaries.
The commentaries appeared to the left of the screen image on recto
pages and to the *right* on verso. *Then* this "assembly" would
cling to the *binding* edge of the page leaving a wide margin on
the outer edge. I.e., as a particular "annotated image" moved
from one page to another, it would automatically re-lay-itself-out
to satisfy these criteria. It was visually appealing -- moreso
because most readers never noticed the differences between
recto and verso renderings!

I haven't found anything that could be coaxed into doing this
other than VP. (Corel screwed up VP when they bought it -- "Gee,
it works great! Let's FIX it.")

Well, we *were* talking about rants, right? :>