posted
I have tears in my eyes, the first few posts of this thread had me literally laughing out loud! heh thanks! LOL! heh heh man train.
OH and WELCOME to the ICELANDER! WOOOOHOOOOOOOO! I so want to go to Iceland, that is one of the places I just HAVE to go WHEN I got to Europe.
Toadkiller... do you like Bj�rk!?!
OH and how do you pronounce that '�' go�ar? Is it a wierd D or an accent over an 'o'!?! I've noticed it in some Old English excerpts from The History of Middle Earth books.
Andrew
[ February 22, 2002, 06:50: Message edited by: AndrewR ]
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
We'll just have to believe Shik about the Icelandic...
I'm actually a wandering American - till last year I was in Hawaii, big switch!.
Icelandic is extremely difficult to learn - primarily because almost all Icelanders speak better English than Americans do (insert joke here). As soon as you try to talk with them they switch to English.
They are some of the nicest folks you'd care to meet too.
This thread is less funny now though....
What, no response from the Mighty Monkey?
-------------------- Twee bieren tevreden, zullen mijn vriend betalen.
Registered: Oct 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
Sorry about taking the fun out of the thread (it WAS quite funny) but thanks for the info!
What about: � (I've seen in German - it looks like a beta) and this: � is it the lowercase form of the 'beta' it was under it in the character map.
And finally, something I've always wanted to know these: �/� the "stargate" A's. What are the 'called' and what is the accent called and what do they sound like!?!
Thanks
Andrew
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Which doesn't make a lot of sense, since it would change the pronunciation of all the words...
And a 'ß' is lowercase. There's no capital, because it never comes at the beginning of a word. Of course, if you want to write a word in all-capitals, it's a tall letter, so you can just use it as it is.
The 'ÿ' is a completely different letter. It doesn't occur in German. I don't actually know where it's used. I assume it occurs where it does in the character set just because it was a convenient spot.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
The double-dot above a vowel has two common meanings. In German-related languages, it transforms the open vowel into a more nasal variant. For example a (as in "car") becomes � (as in "cat", although the length of the sound doesn't change). In Finnish, we only use �/a-umlaut/ae and �/o-umlaut/oe, but usually u-umlaut/ue is used as well. It's just that apparently my computer crashes if I try to type the letter for u-umlaut in Netscape...
If you see the double-dot over some vowel other than a, o or u, it's probably not a real umlaut. Instead, it just means the vowel is given more length, pitch and accent than one would expect. You see that a lot in (French) translitterations of Arabic or of "exotic" languages.
The a-with-a-circle is a Swedish speciality. It basically transforms a into an open variant of o, when the regular o in Swedish is usually very closed and resembles u in pronunciation. Sometimes it's translitterated as aa, but the Danes hate that since their aa isn't pronounced like that (any more than the "ae" in "Gaelic" is pronounced as a-umlaut). In Finland, we actually call the a-with-a-circle "the Swedish o", and thus "STARG�TE" gives us the same sort of giggles as Lily's "Borg? Sounds Swedish" line. The show's name is pronounced something like "Star-goth-e" around here...
Oh, and the Danes and Norwegians insist on writing o-umlaut not with a double-dot, but with a slash across the o. Silly them. It's basically the same letter anyway.
Boy, that was dull. Next week: how to tell the different types of Nordic ski events apart.
posted
Thanks TIMO! Woo, and to prolong this 'boring' subject, how DO you pronounce the a-e 0 ligatures (�) and the o-e and u-e (I don't see them on my character map)!?!
I always thought � was more an 'ee' sound?
Thanks
���w
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
You'll hear "ae" pronounced like a long 'a', a long 'e', and a long 'i'. If it's from Latin, it should be a long 'i' (just try saying the two sounds separately: ah-ee; it sounds like an 'i').
Of course, in German, "ae" is just another way to write 'ä', so it's pronounced like a long 'a' or short 'e' (depending upon how it's used). The 'ö' is pronounced by rounding your lips for an 'o', but saying either a long 'a' or short 'e'. The 'ü' is pronounced by doing the lip-rounding thing and saying either a long 'e' or a short 'i'.
And every time I refer to a long or short vowel, I'm talking about the way those vowels are pronounced in English.
BTW, "umlaut" is the German word for the double-dots over a letter. In English, it's called a diaresis. Usually in English it's used to show that two vowels in a row are pronounced separately, rather than as a diphthong ("naïve", "coöperation"). However, that went out of practice quite a while ago, so you're not likely to see it much, if at all.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Oh, and regarding the ligatures... You'll usually find 'æ' and 'œ' in Latin. I'm not sure if the form "ue" ever exists in Latin, but, if it does, it isn't a diphthong. The sounds are separate, so the letters are written separately. There is no ligature for "ue", so that's why you couldn't find one.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
For what it's worth, in linguistics [�] is the vowel sound in Eng. "cat" or "hat," a rare sound in most other languages. That particular symbol is used because on a logical chart of vowels that sound falls just between the a of "father" and the e of "pet."
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
