Tom wrote: > I thought the umlaut was a specific type of such a mark and that there > were quite a few different markings, and in different languages, that > could change the way a letter sounds?
Diacritical marks are used for lots of different purposes in different languages though the marks themselves have often been copied from other languages. The diaeresis was first used for Greek, to show that a vowel was pronounced separately and not part of a diphthong; this was later applied to French for the same purpose (hence “naïve”), but the same mark was later applied to German for umlaut, which was originally shown by means of a small 〈e〉 over the letter. Just easier to write, I suppose. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
