2012/3/13 Séamas Ó Brógáin <[email protected]>: > 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.
Well, the e was, as far as I know, replaced by ¨ because of the printing quality long ago. The e is always lower case and smaller then the ”main” letter, and if the paper quality is not fine enough, and the font is small, all there's left of the e are two dots. Kind regards Johnny Rosenberg ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ -- 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
