Re: Danish characters (NAC)

[maxid@domain.elided]

In #39, John Hertzman wondered about the names of the unique Danish (and Norwegian) characters. Based on a list of foreign symbols that came with an old version of WordPerfect it seems that in English, they are referred to by book printers as
1)"Danish ae digraph". This is the letter that is pronounced like a-umlaut in German and in Swedish. In Swedish, but not in German, a-umlaut is regarded as a separate letter. Referring to the letter as "Danish ae digraph" places it at the level of the French oe digraph in "boeuf" which is not a separate letter, but a typographical entity.
2) "o-slash". Pronounced same as o-umlaut. On old-fashioned typewriters could be fudged by hitting the "o", going back and then hitting the slash in the same spot. My first name (Soren) really has an o-slash in it. An obvious question when a non-Danish person sees me writing my name with the slash through the "o" would be: first you write an "o", then you delete it, then why did you write it in the first place?
3) "a-ring". An "a" with a little ring above it. The ring is actually a small "o" indicating a pronounciation between "a" and "o". Similar in Swedish. Changed from "aa" in the 1950's in a movement to approach Danish more to the other Scandinavian languages; German capitalization of nouns dropped on the same occasion. The use of "aa" is maintained in some family and place names. To avoid confusion, names with "aa" are placed in the phone book at the end of the alphabet as if they had had an "a-ring" in place of the "aa". Unfortunately, this also means that people with Dutch names containing a long a-sound - spelled "aa" but pronounced nothing like the danish "aa" - can't be found under "a" where they phonetically belong.
Sonny

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