LL-L "Orthography" 2003.08.14 (05) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 14.AUG.2003 (05) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: "Holger Weigelt" <platt at holger-weigelt.de>
Subject: "Orthography"]

> From: Ben J. Bloomgren <godsquad at cox.net>
> Subject: Orthography and its consequences
>
> Hello, Lowlanders, as I listen to High German and French, two things
strike
> me. One is the use of EU in Hochdeutsch for the phoneme oi and the
extremely
> frequent digraph EAU and AU for the phoneme o in French. Do these come
from
> a common source? Did the Normans influence French in such a way that
oi
> developed into o, but the way of writing it only changed slightly?
Thanks,
> Ben

Hello Ben !
German (Hochdeutsch) has two ways to write _oi_:
1.) _äu_
2.) _eu_
With one exception ("Säule") _äu_ only occurs when there is a
morphological
relation to _au_ [aU] -
example: Braut (bride) / Bräute (brides) -
in all the other cases we write _eu_.
The use of _e_ instead of  an _o_ is due to a limitation given by a rule
of
German orthography.
The first part of a diphthong must be _a_ or _e_ (with the exception of
_ä_)
and the second _i_ or _u_.
This gives the following five possibilities:
_ai_ [aI], _au_ [aU]
 _äu_ [OI]
_ei_ [aI], _eu_ [OI]
The result are fixed grapheme-patterns for diphthongs which help to
recognize the proper sounds fast during the reading process.
Regards
Holger

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