Heritage of ÅÄÖ (was RE: China)

[C C Magnus Gustavsson <mag@lysator.liu.se>]

On 28 Jan 2000, Karlsson Kent - keka wrote:

> Well, to be fair, there is a 500 years or so history to this.

Well, yes, the entire discussion is on the whole pretty simplified.
To be fair, we might as well include the full story.

The original Latin alphabet is not equivalent to the current English
alphabet (despite that the latter is called "Basic Latin", nowadays).
If I remember correctly Latin Latin contains 21 characters, missing
"j", "k", "w", "y" and "z". Especially the vocals in the Latin
alphabet (that is "a", "o", "u", "e" and "i") are too few to represent
the sounds of the languages in the Germanic language group (English,
German, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, etc).

Thus all these have introduced new characters in different ways.
Unlike i e Finnish, where you can always know how to spell a word from
how it's pronounced, spelling and pronounciation doesn't correlate in
Germanic languages. The number of new characters thus varies as well.
Furthermore, different languages have introduced different characters
for the same sound (like "y" in Swedish and "u" with umlaut in German,
"o" with umlaut in Swedish and "o" with "/" in Norwegian, etc).

The point is, if we are to talk about characters which have evolved
after original Latin, we have to include i e "y" among those. If the
world had been after German norms there would be no "y" among the
"basic" characters. The German language uses "u" with umlaut instead.


So, ok, there are a lot better historical reasons for "ae" than "pk"
(which isn't very surprising since the latter was made up while the
first was not). Unfortunately it is not possible to make an example
that is equivalent in every respect.

The points are:

  1. A with umlaut is (today) not equivalent to or pronounced as ae.
  2. Using ae is about as awkward to a modern Swede as, say, ph for
     b. (I didn't use "h" since it'd conflict with other words.)
  3. Nowadays it's more natural to transcribe to Gotabanken, Skanska
     and Faltstrom than Goetabanken, Skaanska and Faeltstroem.

/Magnus