ADS-L/NTY synergy

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>He describes the umlaut as an indication that a vowel is to be fronted
>(correct, of course) and that it "also separates the sound of a vowel form
>the different-sounding vowel that follows, as in reënter."  That's with
>two dots over the second "e", in case it didn't survive the software
>conversion, but the latter diacritic, according to all that's holy, is no
>umlaut, even though it looks like one--it's a di(a)eresis.  I'm a bit
>surprised--this is just the sort of trivial piece of grammatical arcana
>I'd have expected Safire to know.

Picky, picky. (^_^)

I agree, of course. Still, I use "umlaut" for "pair of dots on top" almost
universally myself. I think "umlaut" is better recognized than "dieresis"
by the general educated Anglophone public ... anybody disagree? I call the
double-dot in Finnish and Chinese "umlaut" with no shame ... does anyone
feel I should change my ways? What about my "umlaut" and "long-umlaut" for
Hungarian? I suppose "dieresis" is better for application to English and
the Romance languages, and I might use it if I felt sure the listener could
understand ... and if I were sure that I could remember how to pronounce it.

-- Doug Wilson