umlaut

[A. Maberry]

On Thu, 3 May 2001, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
> Is "æ" in Danish simply an equivalent of "ae" (as it is in modern English,
> I think) or is it a "vowel in its own right"? Theoretically, one could take
> the Danish vowel as an alternative way of writing "ae", or one could assert
> that there is an uncommon vowel "æ" in English ....

I can't be entirely sure about Danish, but I suspect it is like Norwegian
where the "ae" ligature is a separate letter not the equivalent of a+e.
Letters beginning with that ligature are listed in dictionaries after Z,
not after a-d, and Consonant-ae (ligature) follow *Consonant-z.

I think that makes sense as to how the letter is considered. Also I
remeber something from I talk I attended on Unicode in which it as stated
that Germans and most other language communities considered a letter plus
an "umlaut" to be letter+diacritic, whereas the Scandinavian language
communities considered them as separate letters; i.e. the o-with-umlaut,
o-with-slash, etc., are letters themselves.

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu