Diacritics on Jeopardy

Paul Johnston paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU
Tue Feb 12 17:56:14 UTC 2008


I agree--and it's interesting that another contestant put New Mexico--
technically right in English, but Spanish Nuevo Mexico would have an
acute accent on the e in "Mexico".


Paul Johnston
On Feb 12, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Barbara Need wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Barbara Need <nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>
> Subject:      Diacritics on Jeopardy
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Last night's Final Jeopardy question had to do with the 50 States and
> asked which state name, when spelled officially, had a diacritic in
> it. The answer was Hawai'i, identifying the (I believe Alex said
> "mark") apostrophe between the final two vowels as a diacritic. That
> seemed wrong to me, since it represents, on its own, a glottal stop.
> Thoughts?
>
> Barbara
>
> Barbara Need
> UChicago
>
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