3 ms·

You are mentioning año (year) and ano (ass). The confusion is that for us spanish speakers, ñ sounds different than n. If I didn't knew how to type ñ I would ac

You are mentioning año (year) and ano (ass). The confusion is that for us spanish speakers, ñ sounds different than n. If I didn't knew how to type ñ I would actually write "anio". It is not exactly there, but it is much closer than ano.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
I would write it anyo if I were going to try to mimic the sound in written English. (Anio looks to me like it sounds like anee-oh.) Part of the problem is that American English mostly doesn't use such marks, so they are alien. We tend to think they don't really matter. It doesn't readily register on a lot of Americans as a misspelled word. "Oh, yeah, it's supposed to have a thing over it. Ack! My keyboard won't do that! Meh. Doesn't really matter. I spelled it correctly. They will know what I mean." Also, people are frequently very, very reluctant to explain to foreigners what the "dirty" words are and what they mean. So people tend to not correct you and tell you "Do you realize you are saying Happy New Ass to everyone?"
- leni536 7y ago
  In Hungarian "ny" is a distinct letter corresponding to the same (or at least very similar) sound as the Spanish "ñ".
  - soylentcola 7y ago
    My girlfriend is Hungarian and gets very annoyed when I try to come up with "close enough" versions of things like "gy" or "ny", etc. Me: Oh, so it's like a cross between the end of "fridge" and the beginning of the French "dieu"? Her: No! You're making this too complicated...it's just "gy". It's a Hungarian sound. You guys don't have it. Me: /shrug (I still do a better job at remembering vowel sounds or those combo letters if I have a more familiar analogue. It's almost like a pnemonic for me.)
  - marton78 7y ago
    Also in Catalan
- cafard 7y ago
  As a reference for any of us English-speakers who wish to get the characters correct, there is https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/ https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/, which I keep bookmarked at work and at home.
- boring_twenties 7y ago
  Digressing here but this is why the Compose key is essential. I'm kind of bitter that it never took off. Even if you'd never typed that character before, your first guess would be Compose-Tilde-N and you'd be right. How we got stuck with "just remember the ASCII or Unicode codepoint for every character your keyboard doesn't have" is beyond me.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I would write it anyo if I were going to try to mimic the sound in written English. (Anio looks to me like it sounds like anee-oh.) Part of the problem is that American English mostly doesn't use such marks, so they are alien. We tend to think they don't really matter. It doesn't readily register on a lot of Americans as a misspelled word. "Oh, yeah, it's supposed to have a thing over it. Ack! My keyboard won't do that! Meh. Doesn't really matter. I spelled it correctly. They will know what I mean." Also, people are frequently very, very reluctant to explain to foreigners what the "dirty" words are and what they mean. So people tend to not correct you and tell you "Do you realize you are saying Happy New Ass to everyone?"

leni536 7y ago
In Hungarian "ny" is a distinct letter corresponding to the same (or at least very similar) sound as the Spanish "ñ".
- soylentcola 7y ago
  My girlfriend is Hungarian and gets very annoyed when I try to come up with "close enough" versions of things like "gy" or "ny", etc. Me: Oh, so it's like a cross between the end of "fridge" and the beginning of the French "dieu"? Her: No! You're making this too complicated...it's just "gy". It's a Hungarian sound. You guys don't have it. Me: /shrug (I still do a better job at remembering vowel sounds or those combo letters if I have a more familiar analogue. It's almost like a pnemonic for me.)
- marton78 7y ago
  Also in Catalan
cafard 7y ago
As a reference for any of us English-speakers who wish to get the characters correct, there is https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/ https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/, which I keep bookmarked at work and at home.
boring_twenties 7y ago
Digressing here but this is why the Compose key is essential. I'm kind of bitter that it never took off. Even if you'd never typed that character before, your first guess would be Compose-Tilde-N and you'd be right. How we got stuck with "just remember the ASCII or Unicode codepoint for every character your keyboard doesn't have" is beyond me.