umlaut

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:53 PM -0500 4/26/01, Mark Odegard wrote:
>><Is "tréma" used outside of French?
>>- - - -From: "Laurence Horn"
>>
>>"Trema" is used also in German and the Nordic languages, precisely to name
>>"the double dots over a letter", which covers also its use in the
>>meaningless "Motörhead" or "Häagen-Dazs" - the latter an impossible
>>construction in any of the languages I speak.
>>This leaves the words "diaeresis" and "Umlaut" to cover what they really
>>mean - from the linguist's point of view.
>>
>>Jan Ivarsson
>
>Really? Your typical German schoolboy will, when spelling out or describing
>a letter will say 'u-trema'? instead of 'u-umlaut' (or whatever is said in
>German ?U mit trema?), as when explaining over the phone how 'Mueller' is to
>be spelled, with a trema over the U or with an E after the U.
>
No, I believe Jan was saying that the double-dot diacritics
functioning for diaeresis and for non-alternating front vowels (along
with the random decorative non-functional double-dots of Häagen Dazs,
Blue Öyster Cult, whatever) are called tremas; umlauts (double dots
indicating a front alternant like "Männer" as the plural of "Mann")
are called umlauts.  As you say, such umlauted vowels can also be
spelled with a following E instead of an umlaut.

larry