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Introducing umlauts
When reading an article about Google Earth in Technology Review last month, I came across a new word: co-ordinates.
Obviously being a geographer, that word is not actually a new one to me, but rather a presentation of it that I don't recall ever seeing before. The word is often written as co-ordinates or coordinates, but this time it was written with an umlaut (if that's the English word for two dots hovering over a letter): coördinates. Umlauts are something I see regularly with living in Germany, but not something I would expect to see decorating English words on which I've not previously seen an umlaut sitting.
At the time of reading the article, it puzzled me for a little while, but a transatlantic plane ride quickly helped the puzzling disappear from my mind. On my way back from CeBIT this evening, a friend passed me The New Yorker to help keep me entertained on the journey. To my surprise, once again, I came across this apparent trend in a short column about drinking Tab cola. This time it was with re-engineering (or reengineering), becoming reëngineering.
Has the adding of umlauts to English words been introduced as the new American English way to emphasise the pronunciation of words in which two letters sit together but don't work in the standard way? Is it becoming the replacement for the hyphen in British English, which in the past seems to have largely been omitted from words used commonly in the American lexicon?
Posted in Information at 11:26 PM on Sunday 12 March 2006
Tags: umlauts
language
english
american
Comments
I am the Editor in Chief of Technology Review. They are not umlauts, but diareses. Diareses signal that two vowels, occuring together, are to be pronounced separately. Far from being a new trend, they represent an old tradition.
Posted by: Jason Pontin at March 13, 2006 6:37 AM
Thanks for your response, Jason. I see from the Wikipedia article on Diaeresis that the biggest users of diaereses are The New Yorker, Technology Review and The Economist. I don't remember having seen them used in The Economist before, but perhaps I have.
Posted by: Dan Karran ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.dankarran.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 13, 2006 9:45 AM
what about the word naive? That ought to have a diaresis on the "i" (I just don't know how to make my computer do one).
The French do it more than us, I think we copied it from their language.
Posted by: mobil at April 4, 2006 1:16 PM
Ah, yes, the umlauts, er, diareses .. er, the dots.
When I saw that Mr. Pontin was made editor of Technology Review, my first thought was not, "Oh, I remember him from that enjoyable magazine, Red Herring."
It was "Oh, no - here come the dots." And sure enough, we were coöperating and reëngineering in no time.
Maybe this affectation has some worthy purpose, but I find it distracting, and
I doubt that readers of Technology Review and Red Herring need help with their pronunciation.
No offense to Mr. Pontin - I liked Red Herring and I still love Technology Review, despite this smidgeon of reëducation.
One man's meat is another man's pet peeve. :-) I will now go back to reading my latest TR...
Posted by: Andrew Royappa at January 3, 2007 7:52 PM
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