Portuguese language changes

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:52 AM -0300 10/7/09, David A. Daniel wrote:
>Portuguese is peppered with umlauts (or has been up till now). Example:
>"conseqüente" where it makes the u pronounceable - as in English, "kwent" -
>whereas without the umlaut proscribed pronunciation would be "kent" as in
>the word "quente" meaning "hot". Fact is, though, that everybody says kwent
>and nobody writes the umlaut which is one reason they are doing away with
>such things. I don’t expect there to be any conseqüent changes to the spoken
>language.
>DAD

I think we've been down this road before, but
there is evidently a split between those who call
all  superposed double-dot diacritics "umlauts"
whatever their function and those who distinguish
"true" umlauts (for vowel fronting) as in German
and Turkish from the superposed double-dots in
many Romance language orthographies (and English,
e.g. on the second o in coöperation) that
indicate diaeresis, i.e. individual pronunciation
of the vowel on which it occurs as in the
Portuguese case above.

LH

>
>____________________________________________
>We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Joel S. Berson
>Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 4:26 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: Portuguese language changes
>
>
>
>At 10/6/2009 02:14 PM, Mark Mandel wrote [quoting:
>>Three letters will be dropped from the alphabet, umlauts will no longer be
>>used for certain words, ...
>
>"Umlauts" in Portuguese?  I am suspicious, and therefore immediately
>discount the truth of the article.  (Only partly kidding.)
>
>But no-one I think has commented on the likelihood that such an edict
>can have any effect on a spoken language.
>
>Joel
>
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