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From: andersa@kuling.UUCP (Anders Andersson)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Computers and human languages
Message-ID: <478@kuling.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-69 18:59:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: kuling.478
Posted: Wed Dec 31 18:59:59 1969
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Aug-87 21:43:24 EDT
References: <218@astra.necisa.oz> <142700010@tiger.UUCP> <2792@phri.UUCP> <6252@brl-smoke.ARPA> <479@sugar.UUCP> <8708171253.AA21033@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: andersa@kuling.UUCP (Anders Andersson)
Organization: Uppsala University, Sweden
Lines: 17
Xref: mnetor comp.std.internat:152 sci.lang:1195

In article <8708171253.AA21033@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> lamy@ai.toronto.edu (Jean-Francois Lamy) writes:
>Just by curiosity, a quick scan of my brain seems to indicate that English
>would be the only European language not to use diacritical marks, digraphs,
>or extra letters. (? - I mean something like the dutch "ij").

As somebody has already mentioned, what's to be considered "diacritical" or
"extra letters" depends on what language you compare with. I consider the
Swedish circle above "a" to be no more "diacritical" than the common dot
above a lowercase "i" or "j". At least the Turkish provide a uniform set of
dotted and undotted "i" in both upper and lower case...

What about the origin of "w", was it known by Caesar or is it a more
modern invention? It seems pretty much like a double "v" ligature to me.
-- 
Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden
Phone: +46 18 183170
UUCP: andersa@kuling.UUCP (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!andersa)