5 ms·

Just note that "largely archaic" doesn't mean useless or dead, just "hasn't been used as much in a while" and there is a strong case to be made that it makes th

Just note that "largely archaic" doesn't mean useless or dead, just "hasn't been used as much in a while" and there is a strong case to be made that it makes the language better and fell out of favor not because it wasn't useful but because it was more expensive (in the age of printing presses and lead type; in the age before Unicode where encoding problems and/or difficulty typing accents/graves/diareses at all without expensive keyboard hardware; etc). The strong association of the diaresis with the house style of the New Yorker is pretty explicitly a class divide in print: the New Yorker could afford the time and care to get the diareses correct everywhere on principle, whereas average newspapers likely could not. I've known Elementary School teachers make very strong cases that it is time we bring back the common usage of the diareses in English to denote dipthongs versus syllable breaks. We finally have the technology to do it, it isn't an expensive overhead, and most soft keyboards on the average phone make it really easy to do it. It's still a bit harder on other computers, but even there emoji soft-keyboards and IMEs are catching up in modern OSes for Modern English users (thanks emoji). For instance in Windows today the diaresis versions of most vowels is relatively easily inputted from the emoji soft-keyboard/IME in Windows 10+ (Win+. or Win+; your choice, to open) under the Math/Symbols tab (denoted by an Omega Ω) and the "Accents" sub-tab denoted by a cedilla ç (our friend from façade).

dragonwriter 5y ago
> I've known Elementary School teachers make very strong cases that it is time we bring back the common usage of the diareses in English to denote dipthongs versus syllable breaks. The ship of regular relations between orthography and pronunciation in English has not merely sailed, but also been torpedoed, sunk, buried in the muck at the bottom, and fossilized. Diareses won't bring it back, or even measurably move the needle. > For instance in Windows today the diaresis versions of most vowels is relatively easily inputted from the emoji soft-keyboard/IME in Windows 10+ (Win+. or Win+; your choice, to open) under the Math/Symbols tab (denoted by an Omega Ω) and the "Accents" sub-tab denoted by a cedilla ç (our friend from façade). Navigating through three submenus from a pop-up menu is not a “relatively easy” way to input a character. Even if you prefer the English (US) keyboard layout generally, it's easier to enable the English (International) layout, Ctrl-Shift to switch to it, type " followed by a character for which the diaresis is supported to get the accented character and Ctrl-Shift to return to the US English keyboard than to use the Emoji tool.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Just because English orthography and pronunciation are in dire straights doesn't mean that it isn't worth arguing for relatively quick wins and easy fixes. Like I said, some Elementary School teachers I've met made a strong case that the diaresis is an easy win and would measurably move the needle based on what they've encountered in teaching with/without it. I realize that's anecdotal hearsay rather than scientific experiment, but I was passing it on as interesting anecdata from people that deal with this subject more directly. My keyboard layout of choice has an AltGr international key and some useful dead key typography shortcuts and I use that most of the time myself. I do appreciate the efficiency bonus of a keyboard layout that includes a bit more International keys. Still though, the emoji keyboard remains a far easier way to *teach* someone to type a character than to teach them to switch keyboard layouts, particularly because installing keyboard layouts requires Admin rights in Windows, and is dozens of steps in Settings pages that most regular users don't ever usually see/know/understand. (It's really not at all easier to enable the English International layout if you don't have admin rights to install alternate keyboards at all beyond your system installer's defaults. The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version.) Push a key to get a popup no matter what keyboards you have installed is easy to describe. Yes, the navigation could be improved and isn't "efficient" at all, but that's entirely orthogonal to "relatively easy". Bad inefficient navigation is still easy to teach/easy to learn/easy to use. Case in point, the emoji keyboard looks like equivalent soft keyboards on phone devices so it should be familiar with is more corelated to "relatively easy" than "efficient" in most people's eyes. Even if I didn't break down the specific tab/sub-tab in my description it should be relatively discoverable if you have a basic idea how an emoji keyboard should work, and discoverable is also more corelated to "easy" than "efficient". (Alternate keyboard layouts aren't very discoverable.) Personally, I love that you can type names of emoji/search keywords and wish they would extend that support to the Symbols section as well. Maybe even some dead-key inspired short codes like "o as a replacement for o with diaresis. (:o turns up the shocked emoji at least/in contrast).
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Still though, the emoji keyboard remains a far easier way to teach someone to type a character than to teach them to switch keyboard layouts, particularly because installing keyboard layouts requires Admin rights in Windows Adding a new keyboard from a language pack that is installed does not require Admin rights. I just tested it on a machine to which I do not have Admin rights. But my point is not so much that contextual swapping of keyboard layouts is a great workflow, but that the emoji keyboard for anything that is a regular part of typing text is an intolerably bad workflow. > The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version. No, it can be disabled by an admin, so if you have a computer someone else administers (the problem you raise with alternative keyboard layouts) it might not be there. (There's no convenient dedicated UI, but it can be done, and enough people want to do it that you can easily find the how-to's in response to questions online.)
eesmith 5y ago
I pointed out that it's in use now by a few periodicals, so of course it's not dead. > makes the language better Do you plan to resume using the word "hôtel"? ("The French spelling, with the circumflex, was also used in English, but is now rare" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel .) > in the age of printing presses and lead type Here's an image for a Linotype machine. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype_keyboard_with_Star_Quadder_attachment.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype... . It has keys for the ligatures ﬂ, ﬀ, ﬃ, and ℔ (!). [1] It also has the ligatures œ (handy when spelling œvre or diarrhœa), and æ (for ægis, dæmon, æther, and mediæval). To double-check, I pulled up a British book from 1846, "Printing apparatus for the use of amateurs : containing full and practical instructions for the use of Cowper's parlour printing press" from archive.org. Page 19 shows a type case layout (see https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/18/mode/2up?q=%22type+case%22&view=theater https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/... ), again with æ, œ, ﬂ, ﬀ, and ﬃ, as well as ﬁ and ﬄ. So the idea that printing presses and lead type caused the orthography "coördinate" to disappear seems ... in need of further supporting evidence. At the very least, it seems "ö" was less common than "æ" or "œ", and the latter two were commonly available in type cases, yet certainly died out in normal use. FWIW, Google n-grams suggests that the use of "coördinate" seems to have peaked in the 1920s, well after the rise of Linotype. And that there was never a time was it was more frequent than "coordinate". https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=co%C3%B6rdinate%2Ccoordinate&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cco%C3%B6rdinate%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccoordinate%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cco%C3%B6rdinate%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccoordinate%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=co%C3%B6rdinat... Google Books finds about 300 books in the 19th century with "coördinate" and also about 300 with "coordinate". [1] I verified ℔ by looking at a Linotype book, at https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9/mode/2up?q=linotype+keyboard&view=theater https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9... .
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  >> makes the language better > Do you plan to resume using the word "hôtel"? ("The French spelling, with the circumflex, was also used in English, but is now rare" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel .) How does that actually archaic spelling of "hotel" help make the language better? The diaresis helps disambiguate the words coop (housing for chickens) and coöp (a business built as a coöperative). That's just one example. The rest of your post has some interesting points, though it's most interesting to me here because it seems to directly conflict with the "old" sense of the word "archaic" from the above discussion if it's a 19th/20th Century invention. It would imply to me the use of the word "archaic" is a bad editorial choice in the Wikipedia article and its primary sources on that word choice maybe not be the most reliable. (Of two citations, the one that actually uses the word "archaic" is a personal blog post, versus the Fowler's Modern English citation simply says "often dropped" and doesn't editorialize but does "blame" "often not on modern keyboards".)

dragonwriter 5y ago

> I've known Elementary School teachers make very strong cases that it is time we bring back the common usage of the diareses in English to denote dipthongs versus syllable breaks. The ship of regular relations between orthography and pronunciation in English has not merely sailed, but also been torpedoed, sunk, buried in the muck at the bottom, and fossilized. Diareses won't bring it back, or even measurably move the needle. > For instance in Windows today the diaresis versions of most vowels is relatively easily inputted from the emoji soft-keyboard/IME in Windows 10+ (Win+. or Win+; your choice, to open) under the Math/Symbols tab (denoted by an Omega Ω) and the "Accents" sub-tab denoted by a cedilla ç (our friend from façade). Navigating through three submenus from a pop-up menu is not a “relatively easy” way to input a character. Even if you prefer the English (US) keyboard layout generally, it's easier to enable the English (International) layout, Ctrl-Shift to switch to it, type " followed by a character for which the diaresis is supported to get the accented character and Ctrl-Shift to return to the US English keyboard than to use the Emoji tool.

WorldMaker 5y ago
Just because English orthography and pronunciation are in dire straights doesn't mean that it isn't worth arguing for relatively quick wins and easy fixes. Like I said, some Elementary School teachers I've met made a strong case that the diaresis is an easy win and would measurably move the needle based on what they've encountered in teaching with/without it. I realize that's anecdotal hearsay rather than scientific experiment, but I was passing it on as interesting anecdata from people that deal with this subject more directly. My keyboard layout of choice has an AltGr international key and some useful dead key typography shortcuts and I use that most of the time myself. I do appreciate the efficiency bonus of a keyboard layout that includes a bit more International keys. Still though, the emoji keyboard remains a far easier way to *teach* someone to type a character than to teach them to switch keyboard layouts, particularly because installing keyboard layouts requires Admin rights in Windows, and is dozens of steps in Settings pages that most regular users don't ever usually see/know/understand. (It's really not at all easier to enable the English International layout if you don't have admin rights to install alternate keyboards at all beyond your system installer's defaults. The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version.) Push a key to get a popup no matter what keyboards you have installed is easy to describe. Yes, the navigation could be improved and isn't "efficient" at all, but that's entirely orthogonal to "relatively easy". Bad inefficient navigation is still easy to teach/easy to learn/easy to use. Case in point, the emoji keyboard looks like equivalent soft keyboards on phone devices so it should be familiar with is more corelated to "relatively easy" than "efficient" in most people's eyes. Even if I didn't break down the specific tab/sub-tab in my description it should be relatively discoverable if you have a basic idea how an emoji keyboard should work, and discoverable is also more corelated to "easy" than "efficient". (Alternate keyboard layouts aren't very discoverable.) Personally, I love that you can type names of emoji/search keywords and wish they would extend that support to the Symbols section as well. Maybe even some dead-key inspired short codes like "o as a replacement for o with diaresis. (:o turns up the shocked emoji at least/in contrast).
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Still though, the emoji keyboard remains a far easier way to teach someone to type a character than to teach them to switch keyboard layouts, particularly because installing keyboard layouts requires Admin rights in Windows Adding a new keyboard from a language pack that is installed does not require Admin rights. I just tested it on a machine to which I do not have Admin rights. But my point is not so much that contextual swapping of keyboard layouts is a great workflow, but that the emoji keyboard for anything that is a regular part of typing text is an intolerably bad workflow. > The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version. No, it can be disabled by an admin, so if you have a computer someone else administers (the problem you raise with alternative keyboard layouts) it might not be there. (There's no convenient dedicated UI, but it can be done, and enough people want to do it that you can easily find the how-to's in response to questions online.)

eesmith 5y ago

I pointed out that it's in use now by a few periodicals, so of course it's not dead. > makes the language better Do you plan to resume using the word "hôtel"? ("The French spelling, with the circumflex, was also used in English, but is now rare" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel .) > in the age of printing presses and lead type Here's an image for a Linotype machine. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype_keyboard_with_Star_Quadder_attachment.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype... . It has keys for the ligatures ﬂ, ﬀ, ﬃ, and ℔ (!). [1] It also has the ligatures œ (handy when spelling œvre or diarrhœa), and æ (for ægis, dæmon, æther, and mediæval). To double-check, I pulled up a British book from 1846, "Printing apparatus for the use of amateurs : containing full and practical instructions for the use of Cowper's parlour printing press" from archive.org. Page 19 shows a type case layout (see https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/18/mode/2up?q=%22type+case%22&view=theater https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/... ), again with æ, œ, ﬂ, ﬀ, and ﬃ, as well as ﬁ and ﬄ. So the idea that printing presses and lead type caused the orthography "coördinate" to disappear seems ... in need of further supporting evidence. At the very least, it seems "ö" was less common than "æ" or "œ", and the latter two were commonly available in type cases, yet certainly died out in normal use. FWIW, Google n-grams suggests that the use of "coördinate" seems to have peaked in the 1920s, well after the rise of Linotype. And that there was never a time was it was more frequent than "coordinate". https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=co%C3%B6rdinate%2Ccoordinate&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cco%C3%B6rdinate%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccoordinate%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Cco%C3%B6rdinate%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccoordinate%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=co%C3%B6rdinat... Google Books finds about 300 books in the 19th century with "coördinate" and also about 300 with "coordinate". [1] I verified ℔ by looking at a Linotype book, at https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9/mode/2up?q=linotype+keyboard&view=theater https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9... .

WorldMaker 5y ago
>> makes the language better > Do you plan to resume using the word "hôtel"? ("The French spelling, with the circumflex, was also used in English, but is now rare" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel .) How does that actually archaic spelling of "hotel" help make the language better? The diaresis helps disambiguate the words coop (housing for chickens) and coöp (a business built as a coöperative). That's just one example. The rest of your post has some interesting points, though it's most interesting to me here because it seems to directly conflict with the "old" sense of the word "archaic" from the above discussion if it's a 19th/20th Century invention. It would imply to me the use of the word "archaic" is a bad editorial choice in the Wikipedia article and its primary sources on that word choice maybe not be the most reliable. (Of two citations, the one that actually uses the word "archaic" is a personal blog post, versus the Fowler's Modern English citation simply says "often dropped" and doesn't editorialize but does "blame" "often not on modern keyboards".)