umlaut

[Mark Odegard]

>From: Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM
>
>If you're talking with an American about the spelling of a word in the
>Roman alphabet in any language, you have a much better chance of being
>understood if you call the diacritic in question an "umlaut" than if you
>call it a "dieresis". As far as I'm concerned, that's all that's necessary
>to validate this usage. The high general probability that your interlocutor
>doesn't know the language in question, let alone the historical or
>synchronic processes that motivate the presence of the diacritic in this
>particular word, only strengthens the argument.

Umlaut, diaeresis and trema all seem to be used for the double dot over a
letter. As Mark Mandel says, its unlikely that the latter two terms are
going to be understood by the average speaker. What are you supposed to call
those meaningless double dots over the band name Motley Crue or in that
brand of ice cream, Hagan Daz?

"Diaeresis" indeed seems to be the official name used by typographers and
the Unicode Consortium, but for the moment, English has settled on 'umlaut'.
The situation may change, especially when Unicode becomes universal, and
everyone can look at the official name on their character set utility. I
think the dictionaries need to acknowledge this, cross-referencing to trema
and diaeresis.



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