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From: comm@zeus.bris.ac.uk (M. Murray)
Subject: Re: Accent marks, French and otherwise
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Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 15:40:24 GMT
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Erland Sommarskog (sommar@algonet.se) wrote:

[snip]

: In any case, what is accent and what is not, is not an obvious case.
: If you would ask me if Swedish uses any accents, I would tell you
: that acute accent is used on "e" in a couple of words, mainly French
: loans, to mark stress. In names a few more accents can appear, but
: that's that. Hm, well, we have W as well, that is some of an accented
: V so to speak. Then you would maybe look at me in disbelief and ask
: about A-ring, and dotted A and O. But then I would tell you that they
: are no more accented letters than Q or E is. Sure, they originate from
: other letters in the Latin alphabet, but so does J, U and W. So when
: talking about Swedish  are three more letters, not accented A:s or
: O:s. 

All I would say is that your idea of what constitues an accented letter
isn't the same as mine. Your (arbitrary) attitude is the same as the Spanish
idea that ch and ll are single letters, so they put them separately in
dictionaries. My idea of common sense says that ll is two letters (after
all, it IS undeniably two l's), and that  is an accented O (it IS an O 
with two dots on it). If you don't agree with my idea of common sense so be 
it. 

-- 
Martin Murray :: School of Chemistry, Bristol University, BS8 1TS, England
