umlaut

[Dennis R. Preston]

We at a bunch of cross purposes here. Would this German schoolboy
(sic, ain't they no girls there? last time I looked, they was) say
"trema"? What do folk (not linguists, not lexicographers, not
philologists) call two squiggles above a letter seems to be the
question here, not the "crystal clear" facts of what's going on
linguistically (which I think we all know).

dInIs (trying to distinguish what we are talking about)

>No, he won't say "U-trema". The trema is what you see - the two dots
>- and the Umlaut is what you hear, like when "goose" changes into
>"geese". So he will pronounce the "ü", which is a sound as different
>from the German "u" as the English "oo" from "ee". When spelling it
>out loud he will say "m-ü-l-l-e-r" - six letters. And he would of
>course not dream of spelling the plural of "goose" "g-o with
>Umlaut-o with Umlaut-s-e".
>And the German definition of "Umlaut" is crystal clear:
>"1. Change of a vowel through the original influence of the
>following, more frontal vowel, in Nhd (new high German) a into ä, o
>into ö, u into ü, au into äu. 2. The thus created sound itself." (My
>translation from Gerhard Wahrig, Deutsches Wörterbuch, mit einem
>"Lexikon der deutschen Sprachlehre"...)
>I do not think that many Germans would get into fights over this.
>There may be som less educated ones who cannot distinguish between
>"Umlaut" and "Ablaut", though.
>When asked by his teacher, the schollboy might explain that the
>Umlaut in writing is indicated by the trema above the original vowel.
>Jan Ivarsson
>jan.ivarsson at transedit.st
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Mark Odegard" <markodegard at HOTMAIL.COM>
>To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 9:53 PM
>Subject: Re: umlaut
>
>
>>  ><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.
>>
>>  I have heard that Germans themselves get into fights over the definition of
>>  'umlaut'.
>>
>>
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--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736