Re: NB as Xy

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:
> Yeah, I've never even heard of Thorn or eszet, and I've never used a
> diaeresis. Call me parochial. Okay, I'm making the change.
Well, I couldn't resist that. For the record: Thorn is the
letter, used in some Scandinavian languages (definitely
Icelandic; not sure off the top of my head which others) and Old
and Middle English to represent the sound of th in the word thorn
(in OE, at least), hence its name. IIRC, it is also used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet to represent one of the th sounds
(there are two in English: this and though).
Eszet (a name I confess I had never heard or seen before; in
typography it's sometimes called Sharp ess) is the character used
in modern German for double ess
A diaeresis is the same mark as that called in German an umlaut.
It occurs in precise spellings of such loan-words as naïve. And
of course the umlaut is very common in German names and phrases
(e.g., Götterdämmerung). Y diaeresis is rather rare; I think it
is used in Turkish or some of the Balkan languages.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx