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From: lisper@yale.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Change the software or the alphabet? (Swedish)
Message-ID: <18775@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Nov-87 19:01:30 EST
Article-I.D.: yale-cel.18775
Posted: Wed Nov 11 19:01:30 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 13:03:37 EST
References: <1446@haddock.ISC.COM> <365@zuring.cwi.nl> <1924@kuukkeli.tut.fi> <18306@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <182@decvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: lisper@yale-celray.UUCP (Bjorn Lisper)
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept, New Haven CT
Lines: 36
Xref: utgpu comp.std.internat:306 sci.lang:1589

In article <182@decvax.UUCP> minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow) writes:
>In article <18306@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Bjorn Lisper (lisper@yale-celray.UUCP)
>suggests that "All Swedish words can really be transcribed to 'English' form"
>by replacing a-ring by 'aa', a-dieresis by 'ae', and o-dieresis by 'oe'.
>
>Unfortunately, this will not work properly:
>
>1. Many Finnish words are used in Swedish.  For example, the common Finnish
>   name "Paavo" is pronounced with a long-a (as in father) sound, not with
>   an 'o' (as in boat).  However P<aa>ve means "Pope"
>
>2. Sequences of vowels become ambiguous.  For example, Sj<aa>are (dock-worker).
>   Many of these sequences arise from Swedish compounding rules.  In
>   general, a sequence of vowels will indicate a morepheme boundary.
>   Turning these sequences into what appear to be trigraphs will cause
>   confusion.
>
>We can see examples of Bjorn's suggestion causing problems in modern Danish.
>In 1948, Danish started using a-ring for the previously used 'aa' sequence.
>Also, words beginning with a-ring were moved to the back of the alphabet,
>*even* if they were written with 'aa.'  Thus, AAlborg (the town) was
>alphabetized after 'Z'.  The one exception to this were foreign words,
>such as from Finnish, with natural sequences of 'aa'.
>
>Martin Minow
>decvax!minow

Certainly there will be problems. The meanings of aa, ae and oe will be
context-dependent, as I pointed out in my previous posting. This is for
exactly the same reasons as you mention. (Another example: "o-" is the
prefix in Swedish equivalent to the English "un-". Thus the Swedish word for
uneconomical, "oekonomisk", contains the "oe", but it is pronounced as "o"
followed by "e", NOT as o-with-dieresis.)  My proposal was merely rethorical
and I do not advocate its enforcement.

Bjorn Lisper