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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Languages written without diacritics
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Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 19:01:29 GMT
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In article <574oqq$a2m@sparcserver.lrz-muenchen.de>,
Helmut Richter <Helmut.Richter@lrz-muenchen.de> wrote:
>I am sorry that this is not exactly a *language* but more so a
>*writing system* question but I did not know where else to post it:

	This is a perfectly acceptable topic for sci.lang, as the study of
writing systems is subsumed under linguistics.

>There seem to be only few languages that are written without
>diacritics.  To be more exact: which languages have the following
>properties:
>
>- written in Latin script as standard (English) or as option
>  (Bulgarian) but not only as transliteration
>
>- having a well-defined orthography (unlike most dialects of European
>  languages)
>
>- not using diacritics, accents, other characters than A-Z and a-z,
>  with the possible exception of loans from other languages
>
>The ones I know are:
>
>  English
>  Swahili
>  Dutch
>  Welsh (?)

	Scratch those last two.  Dutch uses the diaeresis to distinguish
adjoining independent vowels from digraphs (e.g. 'Belgi"e' is pronounced
in three syllables, like German 'Belgien', and not in two like Dutch
'actie').  Welsh does, too, and additionally makes frequent use of the
circumflex (^) to show vowel length and occasional use of the acute accent
to show final syllable stress.

	IIRC, the minor Celtic languages Manx and Cornish use no
diacritics, though how "well-defined" the orthography of each is is
certainly debatable.  The are certainly some Pacific languages that fulfil
your criteria, though Hawai'ian (as that spelling suggests) is not one of
them.
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
