Interesting notes this week on printers' marks. Anyone know the name for the small circle above a vowel, as in Swedish A. Understand it changes pronunciation to "aw." Likewise, the invert caret above consonant, as in Czech? Sound as well?
Thanks!

RJA

Robert, I don't know your answers, though I know that someone here will.

However, welcome to wordcraft! We have a lot of fun here, and we learn a little, too. Hope to see a lot of you!

Welcome to the Wordcraft Community, Robert! You ask interesting questions.

Searching for answers, I found this info about Swedish and this about diacritical marks in general.

My search continues.

PS: Lest we forget, Hawaiian , too, has its share of such marks.

[This message was edited by jerry thomas on Mon Jan 12th, 2004 at 5:47.]

Robert, welcome!

I loved your question, and according to what I found, the circle above the vowel is a ring, and the invert caret above consonant is a caron or háček. Interesting terms.


By the way, it seems the Swedish character is not considered an "A with a ring." "The Scandinavian languages treat the diacritics as new and separate letters of the alphabet, and sort them after z."

Allow me to add my welcome especially considering the fact that I too am a Connecticutian.

Or is it "Connecticutite"? I read once that those of us from the only state in the union with three C's in its name (a fact for which we can be justifiably proud) are labled as "Nutmeggers" which, of course, is ridiculous!

I was born and raised right next door in Norwalk and, as a teenager, would often visit Westport when I felt the need for spiritual, social, or (especially) literary enlightenment. On the other side of that coin, when I felt the need to get into trouble, New York City was right across the state line or, if I really felt the need to get my ass kicked good and proper, New Jersey was not that far away.

Aaaaah, the good 'ol days. Again, welcome to the board!

I'll add my two scents (before bath time!) worth of welcome also!

A related query: What sort of diacritical marks represent the clicks in the language of the Khalahari Bushmen? I've forgottern what their language is called - xosha or something?

I can confirm the pronunciation of Å. I had a Swedish crystallography lecturer who habitually pronounced Ångstroms (always capitalised, and always with the "ring") as "awngstroms".

Ros

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Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
A related query: What sort of diacritical marks represent the clicks in the language of the Khalahari Bushmen? I've forgottern what their language is called - xosha or something?

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Can't give you the name of the language but the click, in written form, is represented by an exclamation mark.

The star of the movie "The God's Must Be Crazy" (a personal favorite and a rare example of where the sequel was as good as its predecessor) was a gentleman by the name of N!xau.

The star of the movie "The God's Must Be Crazy" (a personal favorite and a rare
example of where the sequel was as good as its predecessor) was a gentleman by the
name of N!xau.
________________________________________________
The original is among my all-time favorites! NPR did a brief bit on N!xau's death late last year, but they didn't say what the cause was. They did mention that, just as in the movie, when Jamie Uys, the director/producer tried to pay him with money, he had no idea what it was for, so they paid him in cattle. Alas, lions killed his earnings. Here in the USA, bears eat one's earnings - Wall Street bears anyway.

I have never seen the film, nor indeed heard of it. So tell me, please, what is the crazy characteristic or possession that this God possesses (assuming it's not must)?

And if it actually is "Must" (unfermented grape juice) in what way can it be exhorted to be crazy? The yeast's working too slowly and wants a pep-up, maybe?

Richard English

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Originally posted by Richard English:
I have never seen the film, nor indeed heard of it.

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How appalling! In another thread, R.E. mentions that misused apostrophies make him cross (and rightly so), Kalleh responds with, yes, a misused apostrope, then I chime in with my just slightly over-the-top and more than a little bit snotty R.E. impression. (Don't know what got into me; I've really been trying to be good lately.)

And then, horror of horrors, I go and screw up a damn apostrophe!!!

My apologies all around. Serves me right...


If, however, you've never heard of "The Gods (sans apostrophe) Must Be Crazy," I heartily recommend it. If I were to compile a list of all-time favorite foreign films, this would definitely be high on it. The story begins when an African bushman discovers, in the middle of the Kalahari desert, a Coke bottle which had been tossed overboard by the pilot of a small aircraft. Having never seen one before, he and his family find a multitude of ways to use it before finally deciding that it is an evil thing. The main part of the movie deals with his journey to find the end of the world so that he may return this strange gift to the gods (who must be crazy to have given it to him) and, along the way, encountering "civilization" in the form of various conflicting sub-groups.

It is by no means a sophisticated film but many parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny. Ditto the sequel.

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And then, horror of horrors, I go and screw up a damn apostrophe!!!

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And, of course, dear, sweet Kalleh would never stoop to say I told you so!

We all miss errors on this site, from time to time. Let's forget about pointing each and every one out! If nothing else, it scares away newcomers.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:

We all miss errors on this site, from time to time. Let's forget about pointing each and every one out! If nothing else, it scares away newcomers.

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We don't point out every error. Just the embarrassing ones.



Every silver lining has a cloud.
Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Not to quibble, but...recently it has been just about every error. Surely if we read a published article with a missplaced apostrophe or an egregious grammatical error or misspelling, then that's appropriate. But, posting here (if you're like me) is often done on the run, with your brain going a lot faster than your fingers. We are bound to make an error every now and then. That's just my position, and I've said it before, I know. I will try to shut up about it now!

The clicks in Bushman languages (there's something like 20 or 30 languages in the Kalahari area that all have clicks) are represented by various punctuation symbols: there's / and ! and // and a not-equals sign, which I don't think I can do here. These are distinct places of articulation, as distinct as p and t and k.

In addition, they can be voiced, aspirated, nasalized etc. So just as t can be d or th or nd, so / can be /h or x/ or various other combinations.

Some neighbouring Bantu languages, principally Zulu and Xhosa, have borrowed these click sounds. They use the letters c and q and x for them. They also have voiced, aspirated etc. forms, written qh and nq and gq etc.

Do you know this b/c of personal experience?

It's fascinating to me--the way different languages make sounds and record them.

(One whole course in Linguistics--but hey! it made me think)

First, my thanks to all the kind folks for their welcome to Wordcraft...

I've continued to follow links on diacritical marks. Interesting to note there seem to be two uses for the umlaut versus diaresis. First is as in "Zürich" where the ü stands for "ue" it replaces. The "e" first shrank, then moved above the "u" and finally faded like the Chesire Cat, until only the two dots of a grin remained.

The other use of the two dots is to show a separate value for a vowel, as the second "e" in "preëxisting."

Following the path of shrinking elements, however, led to another interesting effect. It seems that our exclamation point ! grew from the Latin Io, or "joy." The "o" shrank, slipped under the "I" and the two continued to diminish together, until we are left with !

I found a similar derivation for "?" Anyone care to hazard a guess or shall I simply post it next time?(!)

RJA

Thanks for your contribution,Robert!

While we impatiently await the history of the ??? question mark, I ponder the ~~~ tilde, which, I understand, evolved from a double n, as in donna. One of the n's mounted the other, creating doña.

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The "o" shrank, slipped under the "I" and the two continued to diminish together, until we are left with !

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Oh, Robert, that is fascinating. Where did you find out about it?

There is an interesting list of many punctuation marks with origins at: http://www.yaelf.com/punctuation.shtml

I first ran across the history/origins of accents and others "typographical helpers" in Greek Grammar, H W Smyth, Harvard 1966. Paragraph 161 notes that accent marks were first used around 200 BC, to help "barbarians" (non-Greek speakers) with pronunciations and "breathings." Paragraph 151 distinguishs accents for tones in ancient Greek -- the "song accompanying words" -- from the accents in modern Greek, which refer to stresses.

And to complete the prior teaser, "?" derives from "Quaestio" the "Q" evolving in the hook, while the "o" shrinks and again slips underneath. Thus "?" and "!" have similar birth stories.

RJA

I always thought the ? was derived from a Q for query/question (or Latin quaere to be exact) -- but don't quote me on that, I don't know, it might be just a childhood urban myth.

I have to say the idea of the exclamation mark coming from io strikes me as a teency bit post-facto. Why would a monk in a scriptorium write that? The Q-for-quaere makes sense. You write a question then write 'qn.' after it and the sign gets transformed a little. But after an exclamation you'd write 'ex.', on that logic. However, I'm just waffling, but it looks to me a bit like one of those cute stories people make up. What's the evidence? I'd be interested in seeing if it stood up.

Edit. Rats, you posted the answer as I was typing my reply. Now I need to go and read that...

Hm, origin of words perhaps, but it would be nice to know the histories of the signs -- , and : and ; -- at what point did ";" became a semicolon in Western languages or a question mark in Greek?

And the idea of "$" from "8" is definitely contentious. I was persuaded the other day that its derivation from "Ps" (peso) was more probable than most, but they don't really know. It's naughty just to give one hypothesis like that.

Aput, a few questions as to the click sounds. Do you know of any web site where one can hear them? Where an interested but ignorant can read more about it? And when these languages are written down, how are the click sounds alphabetized?

I know, these are obscure questions, but if you have any info, thanks in advance.

Edit: oh, one more thing:
WELCOME to our humble board

Robert Arvanitis mentioned the dates of accent marks and the origins of the ? and ! symbols. This site confirms Robert on the latter, and gives some further dates of symbols. Quoting:

It wasn’t till later that word divisions were indicated by a dot centered between words. Still later, spaces were used in place of the dots, and by the seventh century the convention was quite common. In some early medieval manuscripts, two vertically aligned dots represented a full stop at the end of a sentence. Eventually one of the dots was dropped, and the remaining dot served as a period, colon or comma, depending on whether it was aligned with the top, middle, or base of the lowercase letters.

When the English scholar Alcuin established a consistent writing style for all scribes in the Holy Roman Empire in the ninth century A.D., one significant result was the Caroline minuscules – the forerunners of our own lowercase letters. Alcuin also attempted to standardize the marks and use of punctuation. Aldus Manutius, the Renaissance typographer and printer, helped establish Alcuin’s reforms through consistent usage. Manutius used a period to indicate a full stop at the end of a sentence and a diagonal slash to represent a pause.

The basic form of the question mark was developed in sixteenth-century England. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, quotation marks, the apostrophe, the dash, and the exclamation point were added to the basic set of punctuation marks in consistent use.

Our repertoire of punctuation continues to expand. As recently as the 1960s, a new mark called the interrobang was proposed. A ligature of the exclamation point and question mark, the interrobang would serve as a way to punctuate sentences like, “You did what?!”

And a bit of humor from the same site:

Timothy Dexter was a prominent citizen of eighteenth century New England, a businessman and sometime writer with a reputation as an eccentric. Dexter’s best-known book, A Pickle for the Knowing Ones,was remarkable only for its complete lack of punctuation.

To its second edition Dexter added a page filled with periods, commas, semicolons and other punctuation marks, so that readers could, according to Dexter, "pepper and salt it as they please."

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Originally posted by Robert Arvanitis:
I found a similar derivation for "?" Anyone care to hazard a guess or shall I simply post it next time?(!)
RJA

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It looks a cat whose body has been reduced to a pile of ashes but whose tail still remains. Is that the cat that curiosity killed?

Tinman

On clicks: don't know to alphabetization, but the sound files for Peter Ladefoged's course on phonetics, his book, Vowels and Consonants are endlessly fascinating and frustrating. Clicks are in chapter 6. Highly recommended.

Catching up on this thread after being away for the weekend, I couldn't wait to chime in with my two cents worth concerning the beloved interrobang but see, sadly, that I was beaten to it.

Just to add to it though, the definition I first heard was that it was to be used in the case of a question asked by an excited speaker when a direct answer was not expected. The example given was when a man comes home unexpectedly to find his wife in bed with another man and he screams to them "What do you think you're doing (interrobang)". What they are doing is obvious and no description from them is required.

(The question he'd actually want answered might be "Honey, where did you put my machete?" but that's another story entirely.)

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Originally posted by C J Strolin:
a man comes home unexpectedly to find his wife in bed with another man and he screams to them "What do you think you're doing (interrobang)"

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The version I heard is that he screams, "I am surprised!" To which his wife, ever-precise with her diction, replies,

quote:

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No, George. We are surprised¹; you are astonished.

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Ran across an interesting usage "Taškent," versus the more usual "Tashkent." Someone in the Russian Federation uses the caron/hacek for the "sh" form.

RJA

But Taškent is in Uzbekistan. Wouldn't somebody in the Russian Republic use Cyrillic ш? The "Swedish" å is also used in Danish where earlier in the orthographer it was a double-a, as it still is in the surname Kierkegaard.

jheem wrote: "Wouldn't somebody in Russian use Cyrillic ш?"

I suspect the writer was thinking of how to achieve the gentle susurrus of "sh" in translation and reached for the nearby Middle European hacek...

Also interesting point on dual use of ring (flatten a or show missing), similar to dual use of double dots (show missing letter or make two letters distinct).

RJA

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Also interesting point on dual use of ring (flatten a or show missing), similar to dual use of double dots (show missing letter or make two letters distinct).

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Also, Danish uses the ash, æ, where Swedish uses the umlaut-a, ä. Both of those letters come towards the end of their respective alphabets. Speaking of missing letters leaving a trace behind, there's also the circumflex in French: it usually indicates an earlier, etymological 's'. Turkish uses a dotless 'i' (which means they also have a dotted capital 'i'). The cedilla c, ç, comes from a smaller z underneath the c. And the tilde is an older 'm', 'n', or macron above the nasalized vowel (e.g., in Portuguese), but Polish uses the ogonek (little hook) under vowels to represent nasalization. And finally we, in English, use 'h' after words to represent new sounds (where Irish uses a dot [above the letter] and Hebrew [within the letter] one, dagesh, similarly, too).

[This message was edited by jheem on Tue Feb 17th, 2004 at 8:55.]

It's Official! I'm Outa Control! AAAAAAAH!!!

Of jheem and Bob A., I'm not critical
When I say they are so analytical!
Their perceptive remarks
Teach me all about marks
Like Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Karl, and diacritical.

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Like Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Karl, and diacritical.

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Just for the record, Julius aka Groucho is my favorite (dia)critical Marx.

Or Groučo and Čico, and if this Unicode doesn't show up I'll look silly.

Tashkent is known in Uzbek as Toshkent. Now most of those Turkic languages have re-adopted Turkish-style romanizations since 1991, so you might expect Toşkent, but I don't think they do use that.

What I want to know is how do you guys find the fonts that have the darcritical marx -er- marks? They ain't on MY keyboard!

"Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like bananas." Groucho

Nor on mine, Asa!

Tempus fugit, Kalleh and Asa!

Groucho is in New England (haberdasher)..

I only think about Turkey at Thanksgiving..

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What I want to know is how do you guys find the fonts that have the darcritical marx -er- marks? They ain't on MY keyboard!

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They ain't on mine either. I use the CharMap utility (under Windows). Or you could go to the Unicode website, download some PDFs, and type the numbers for the desired glyph as an XML entity.

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Originally posted by jheem:
They ain't on mine either. I use the CharMap utility (under Windows). Or you could go to the Unicode website, download some PDFs, and type the numbers for the desired glyph as an XML entity.

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Huh?

Tinman

There are lists of the various codes all over the Web. One such is at http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/reference/special_characters/

Basically, to get a special character to appear in a post you type an ampersand (&), a code for the character, and a semicolon.

So,
è will produce è
È will produce È
å will produce å
ø will produce ø, and so on...

Alternatively, each character has a number. You can type the ampersand, a hash sign, the number, and a semicolon.

Thus:
è will produce è, etc.

for Windows 98 users (I'm sure other versions have something similar),

Click Start
Select Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Character Map

(I think, I did juggle my settings around a bit - anyway Character Map is what you are after)

This brings up a grid of ll the cgaracters available.

Click on the one you want and in the bottom corner you will see the combination of keystrokes needed to produce it.

Or you can cut an paste from it.

Every silver lining has a cloud.
Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Bob, the trouble with that approach is that only Windows users will see it in many cases. Macs and other operating systems use different methods.

If you use the XML/HTML entities (i.e., the ones with the ampersand, hashmark, and ending with a semi-colon), any Unicode-compliant browser should display correctly no matter what OS. That having been said, using something like SAMPA to indicate IPA symbols is probably a better, overall strategy.

See SAMPA

Maybe it’s déjà vu, but I’m sure we had a soupçon of interest in this topic recently when the word protégé was being discussed (as an alternative to “mentee”)

I recall, I’m sure, suggesting that the simplest course was to prepare the work in Word and use its “insert symbol” command or its spelling and grammar correction feature.


Then copy and paste - as indeed have I just now.

Richard English

[This message was edited by Richard English on Thu Feb 19th, 2004 at 14:42.]

Yes, I thought we had a list, too, but I checked our discussion of protégé and couldn't find it. At that time, Haberdasher sent me a long list via PT where you use &# and a number to get various symbols (similar to arnie's, I guess), but I could never get it to work. How do you do that without the & and # being typed?

Now, Bob's way works for me (thank you!), but it doesn't seem so efficient! In fact, all these methods seem complex to me. It's too bad some of the more common symbols aren't on the keyboards.

[This message was edited by Kalleh on Thu Feb 19th, 2004 at 16:36.]

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I recall, I’m sure, suggesting that the simplest course was to prepare the work in Word and use its “insert symbol” command or its spelling and grammar correction feature.

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Yes, but that's only an option if you (1) have MS Word installed and (2) are using either MacOS or Windows.

Someone just sent me an email about FREE programs.
Here's the gist of it:

In case anyone is interested, there is an excellent Office Suite of programs available for Windows, Mac, Linux (and others) that is completely FREE of charge. It supports dozens of languages, too. (I use Japanese in many of my
documents, and it is handled perfectly.) Because it runs on so many different computers, it has Excellent ability to use files from other programs (Not just MS)

It is called OpenOffice.org, and was developed by SUN Microsystems. It is very powerful, easy to use, and FREE, FREE, FREE! Included in the Suite are these programs:

1. Word Processor (I'm co-authoring a magazine article. I use OpenOffice, my colleague is using Microsoft Word. We've had NO problems.)

2. Spreadsheet: Excel compatible, but also with the nice feature of being able to export your file as a PDF directly from within the program.

3. Presentation: I use this instead of PowerPoint. Today I imported a PowerPoint file, ran the slideshow in OpenOffice, edited the presentation (in OO), and then saved it back as a PPT file. Wonderful!

4. Drawing Program: Create simple or complex drawings. Export them in many different common image formats. Insert charts, tables, formulas, etc. created in other OpenOffice.org programs!

It's always nice to have options, especially when they're very good options and FREE! I am in no way connected with OpenOffice.org or SUN. If the high cost of software gets you down, then you might want to check out OpenOffice.org.

Homepage is: www.openoffice.org

The download of the entire suite is big (over 60 MB).

Tinman