🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <133@dg_rtp.UUCP> goudreau@dg_rtp.UUCP (Bob Goudreau) writes:
>>Since when has French used umlaute?
>
>For quite a long time.  For example, "Citro\:en", "Saint-Sa\:ens", "No\:el",
>where "\:e" stands for umlaut-e.

This started with somebody saying that French written language has use
for "umlaut-y"; whether this is true or not I don't know, as I don't
speak French. However, the term "umlaut" is a bit inappropriate. "Umlaut"
is a German word meaning "re-sounding", and is in German used with the
vowels a, o and u. Often umlaut is employed when the form of a word
changes. Plural of "Buch" is "B\:ucher". Due to strong German influence
during medieval time these accented vowels have been adopted by the
Swedish language, but they are considered letters of their own, and are
never referred to as "umlauts" here.

The double-dot accent in French has a completely different meaning, and
is called "trema", I think. It is used to separate two consecutive vowels
in their pronounciation, making them not sound like a diphtong.

Anyway, I suppose there is no visual difference between the "umlaut" and
"trema" accents, so in standard text-processing equipment they might
probably be considered the same, but what about in a voice synthesizer
application?
-- 
Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden
Phone: +46 18 183170
UUCP: andersa@kuling.UUCP (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!andersa)