🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <TML.92Dec8144926@tiuhti.tik.vtt.fi> tml@tik.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist) writes:
>   ...
>   >>       Similarly, o-diaeresis can be rendered as "oe" in German 
>   >>       or Swedish but not in English ("co<o-diaeresis>peration").
>   ...
>No, definitely not. If a swedish-speaking person in general (ie, not
>one accustomed to the German way of using "oe") would face the task of
>writing a word containing odiaeresis on a keyboard without it, she
>would probably use "o", and then only because of the similar look of
>the glyph.  The pronunciation is quite different, of course, and
>odiaeresis is in no way mentally pictured as an "o" with dots any more
>than "E" is thought to be a "F" with a lower bar...

It's even worse for Finnish, because 'ae', 'oe', and 'ue' are very
common vowel combinations.  So, even if a Finnish-speaking person
were familiar with the German custom, it would be extremely tedious
always to disambiguate between the two alternatives.

BTW, a wonderful case of double transcription was seen at the
Barcelona Olympics:  There was an ethnic Finn from Russia (Carelia)
whose surname was Ha"ma"la"inen (yet another way to show umlauts).
The name was shown as Khiamialiainen, because:
- Finnish 'h' is transcribed to the Russian letter which denotes
  a stronger 'h' and is transcribed back to 'kh' in many European
  languages ('ch' in German).
- Finnish a-umlaut is transcribed to the Russian 'ja' (or 'ya'
  for the English and French), because that gives the nearest
  equivalent vowel.

Similarly, the surname of the famous Estonian computer scientist
Enn Tyugu is actually To~ugu (o with tilde):  the Russian letter
whose pronunciation is closest to this special Estonian vowel
is usually transcribed as 'y' in the Latin alphabet.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Markku Sakkinen (sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi)
       SAKKINEN@FINJYU.bitnet (alternative network address)
Department of Computer Science and Information Systems
University of Jyvaskyla (a's with umlauts)
PL 35
SF-40351 Jyvaskyla (umlauts again)
Finland
----------------------------------------------------------------------