6 ms·

Oh, this is about the history of calligraphy, typography, alphabets and character sets surrounding the (swedish) letter (which resembles an) “A” with a ring (no

Oh, this is about the history of calligraphy, typography, alphabets and character sets surrounding the (swedish) letter (which resembles an) “A” with a ring (non)diacritic, and not about the ångström as a unit of measurement. EDIT: People are vehement about the status of this particular character, and that doesn’t change the fact that I expected an article about a unit of measurement. (yes, I understand that disagreement is afoot, but it has nothing to do with what I originally came here for)

robin_reala 9y ago
I think that a Swede would disagree with you that this is an A with a ˚ diacritic; Å is seen here as a seperate letter and granted its own place in the alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85#Place_in_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85#Place_in_alphabet
- interfixus 9y ago
  Any Scandinavian would disagree. Æ, Ø, and Å most definitely are letters in their own right. The case is slightly less clear for W.
  - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
    Although a Swedish person might disagree about how to write ø and æ...
    - wingerlang 9y ago
      Why? Those characters are not used in the Swedish language.
      - emj 9y ago
        AFAIK they sound exactly the same like København and Köpenhamn.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        interfixus 9y ago
        That's actually not quite the same ø. The Swedish one is slightly lighter. Use the deeper Danish ø-sound in a Swedish context, and you clearly sound like a Dane speaking Swedish.
        tilt_error 9y ago
        The same is true for ä and æ. The latter has a broader sound while the former sounds a bit closer to e. It is easy to spot Norwegians talking Swedish (such as myself :)
        asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
        You try to talk Swedish rather than just speaking Norwegian? My experience is that Scandinavians just speak their native language and expect that other Scandinavians should understand them. Any attempts to speak the other language end up sounding like parodies rather than serious attempts.
        emj 9y ago
        Not sure it's different enough to warrant a new letter, but Spanish O and Scandinavian Å has the same sound so I guess it's all very muddled.
- henrikschroder 9y ago
  "Ä" is worse, it can be three completely different things depending on language. In for example Swedish, it's a distinct letter of the alphabet, representing a distinct vowel. In German, it's the letter "A" with an umlaut mark, which is not a distinct letter of the alphabet, but it is a distinct vowel. And in French, it's the letter "A" with a diaresis mark, which neither makes it a distinct letter of the alphabet, nor a distinct vowel, it's just a mark that signifies that two adjacent vowels should not be pronounced as a diphtong.
  - henrikschroder 9y ago
    Or you have Icelandic: "A" is a distinct letter and distinct vowel. "Á" is also a distinct letter and a distinct vowel, and not an "A" with an acute accent. "À" exists in Icelandic in (very few) French loan-words and is not a distinct letter nor a distinct vowel, instead it's viewed as an "A" with a grave accent. (And this is why lexical sorting has to be highly localized. I still think Turkish has the funniest gotcha where "I" and "i" aren't the upper/lower-case of the same letter, it's the uppercase of one letter, and the lowercase of a completely different letter.)
    - Freak_NL 9y ago
      Specifically: ı (capital I; the letter is pronounced as a schwa), and: i (capital İ) This is why upper- and lowercasing of letters is also locale-dependant (in addition to collation).
  - weinzierl 9y ago
    > In German, it's the letter "A" with an umlaut mark, which is not a distinct letter of the alphabet, but it is a distinct vowel. The umlauts are distinct letters of the German alphabet. The English Wikipedia says so but still lists them as special characters which is confusing at best. The German Wikipedia just lists the umlauts as ordinary characters. >German uses three letter-diacritic combinations (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, Ü/ü) using the umlaut and one ligature (ß (called Eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)) which are officially considered distinct letters of the alphabet.[1] I believe there are just two cases: - A umlaut: German, Swedish, etc. - A with diaeresis: French, Catalan, etc. It is important to distinguish both cases because they differ at least in collation and typography. In a German dictionary A with diaeresis should be always treated like an A, while A umlaut should be treated according to the different collation standards that exist in German. In a German font the dots are closer to the letter than in a French font. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography#Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography#Alphabet
asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
This sort of interesting article is exactly what I come to Hacker News for.
- tritium 9y ago
  It didn’t get interesting to me, until I was quickly corrected by more than one person. Is the phonetic pronunciation... what is the pronunciation for Å in English?
  - jpttsn 9y ago
    Aww
  - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
    Similar to English "o" (more so than the Scandinavian o). It is one of the easier vowel sounds. Ø and y and u are far harder for English speakers.
  - repsak 9y ago
    As the o in 'more'
  - vegardx 9y ago
    It's satire, and a little funny. They have the correct pronunciation for Norwegian at least, it's similar enough in Danish and Swedish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f488uJAQgmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f488uJAQgmw
henrikschroder 9y ago
Also, extra extra unnecessary knowledge: The symbol for the Ångström unit has a different Unicode encoding than the capital "Å", in the same way that the Ohm symbol "Ω" is different from Greek capital omega. "W" for Watt doesn't have it's own codepoint in Unicode though, so that's arbitrary.
- weinzierl 9y ago
  This has only been allowed into Unicode for compatibility with older encodings and is sort of an exception. > Multiple Semantics. Because nonspacing combining marks have such a wide variety of applications, they may have multiple semantic values. For example, U+0308 = diaeresis = trema = umlaut = double derivative. Such multiple functions for a single combining mark are not separately encoded in the standard. [..] > Occasionally, for compatibility with other standards, a single abstract character may correspond to more than one code point—for example, “Å” corresponds both to U+00C5 Å latin capital letter a with ring above and to U+212B Å angstrom sign. Both quotes from Unicode Standard 10.0: http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/UnicodeStandard-10.0.pdf http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/UnicodeStandar...
crottypeter 9y ago
That's what all the "non-Swedish physicists" thought.

robin_reala 9y ago

I think that a Swede would disagree with you that this is an A with a ˚ diacritic; Å is seen here as a seperate letter and granted its own place in the alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85#Place_in_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85#Place_in_alphabet

interfixus 9y ago
Any Scandinavian would disagree. Æ, Ø, and Å most definitely are letters in their own right. The case is slightly less clear for W.
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
  Although a Swedish person might disagree about how to write ø and æ...
  - wingerlang 9y ago
    Why? Those characters are not used in the Swedish language.
    - emj 9y ago
      AFAIK they sound exactly the same like København and Köpenhamn.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - interfixus 9y ago
        That's actually not quite the same ø. The Swedish one is slightly lighter. Use the deeper Danish ø-sound in a Swedish context, and you clearly sound like a Dane speaking Swedish.
        tilt_error 9y ago
        The same is true for ä and æ. The latter has a broader sound while the former sounds a bit closer to e. It is easy to spot Norwegians talking Swedish (such as myself :)
        asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
        You try to talk Swedish rather than just speaking Norwegian? My experience is that Scandinavians just speak their native language and expect that other Scandinavians should understand them. Any attempts to speak the other language end up sounding like parodies rather than serious attempts.
        emj 9y ago
        Not sure it's different enough to warrant a new letter, but Spanish O and Scandinavian Å has the same sound so I guess it's all very muddled.
henrikschroder 9y ago
"Ä" is worse, it can be three completely different things depending on language. In for example Swedish, it's a distinct letter of the alphabet, representing a distinct vowel. In German, it's the letter "A" with an umlaut mark, which is not a distinct letter of the alphabet, but it is a distinct vowel. And in French, it's the letter "A" with a diaresis mark, which neither makes it a distinct letter of the alphabet, nor a distinct vowel, it's just a mark that signifies that two adjacent vowels should not be pronounced as a diphtong.
- henrikschroder 9y ago
  Or you have Icelandic: "A" is a distinct letter and distinct vowel. "Á" is also a distinct letter and a distinct vowel, and not an "A" with an acute accent. "À" exists in Icelandic in (very few) French loan-words and is not a distinct letter nor a distinct vowel, instead it's viewed as an "A" with a grave accent. (And this is why lexical sorting has to be highly localized. I still think Turkish has the funniest gotcha where "I" and "i" aren't the upper/lower-case of the same letter, it's the uppercase of one letter, and the lowercase of a completely different letter.)
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Specifically: ı (capital I; the letter is pronounced as a schwa), and: i (capital İ) This is why upper- and lowercasing of letters is also locale-dependant (in addition to collation).
- weinzierl 9y ago
  > In German, it's the letter "A" with an umlaut mark, which is not a distinct letter of the alphabet, but it is a distinct vowel. The umlauts are distinct letters of the German alphabet. The English Wikipedia says so but still lists them as special characters which is confusing at best. The German Wikipedia just lists the umlauts as ordinary characters. >German uses three letter-diacritic combinations (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, Ü/ü) using the umlaut and one ligature (ß (called Eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)) which are officially considered distinct letters of the alphabet.[1] I believe there are just two cases: - A umlaut: German, Swedish, etc. - A with diaeresis: French, Catalan, etc. It is important to distinguish both cases because they differ at least in collation and typography. In a German dictionary A with diaeresis should be always treated like an A, while A umlaut should be treated according to the different collation standards that exist in German. In a German font the dots are closer to the letter than in a French font. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography#Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography#Alphabet

asfdsfggtfd 9y ago

This sort of interesting article is exactly what I come to Hacker News for.

tritium 9y ago
It didn’t get interesting to me, until I was quickly corrected by more than one person. Is the phonetic pronunciation... what is the pronunciation for Å in English?
- jpttsn 9y ago
  Aww
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
  Similar to English "o" (more so than the Scandinavian o). It is one of the easier vowel sounds. Ø and y and u are far harder for English speakers.
- repsak 9y ago
  As the o in 'more'
- vegardx 9y ago
  It's satire, and a little funny. They have the correct pronunciation for Norwegian at least, it's similar enough in Danish and Swedish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f488uJAQgmw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f488uJAQgmw

henrikschroder 9y ago

Also, extra extra unnecessary knowledge: The symbol for the Ångström unit has a different Unicode encoding than the capital "Å", in the same way that the Ohm symbol "Ω" is different from Greek capital omega. "W" for Watt doesn't have it's own codepoint in Unicode though, so that's arbitrary.

weinzierl 9y ago
This has only been allowed into Unicode for compatibility with older encodings and is sort of an exception. > Multiple Semantics. Because nonspacing combining marks have such a wide variety of applications, they may have multiple semantic values. For example, U+0308 = diaeresis = trema = umlaut = double derivative. Such multiple functions for a single combining mark are not separately encoded in the standard. [..] > Occasionally, for compatibility with other standards, a single abstract character may correspond to more than one code point—for example, “Å” corresponds both to U+00C5 Å latin capital letter a with ring above and to U+212B Å angstrom sign. Both quotes from Unicode Standard 10.0: http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/UnicodeStandard-10.0.pdf http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/UnicodeStandar...

crottypeter 9y ago

That's what all the "non-Swedish physicists" thought.