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That says more about how Google has been personalised to you than about Icelandic phonebooks. By the way, you are misspelling the name. The dots are not decor

That says more about how Google has been personalised to you than about Icelandic phonebooks. By the way, you are misspelling the name. The dots are not decoration, it's a different letter. Edit: But I guess you know that, and o is just easier to type.

mr_toad 2y ago
It’s not a different letter, it’s the same letter with a diacritic. It might be incorrect when writing in Icelandic but in English it’s no more incorrect than using cafe instead of café.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  In that case, the tail on the J is just a decoration of an I, and we can write Iack Iones.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  munch117 is right; it's a different letter. Compare French é and è, different vowels with different spellings, to pinyin é and è, identical vowels with different diacritically-marked tones. The French vowels don't have diacritics any more than i and j do. That's a graphemic definition of "letter". There is an alternative, collation order, but in Icelandic that will also tell you that o and ö are two different letters, and ö sorts after þ while o sorts before it.
  - simiones 2y ago
    The French definitely don't consider those to be different letters - they are e with an acute accent and a grave accent respectively; an accent is a type of diacritic mark. There's also a circumflex accent in French, and several other vowels can take accents. They even have two other diacritic marks, the trema (two dots) and the cedilla. This is apparently different in Icelandic, where indeed ö is considered a separate letter, not an o with an umlaut/two dots. But this is simply a convention of Icelandic typography - German for example also uses ö in certain words, but they do consider it an o with an umlaut.
    - amiga386 2y ago
      It depends on the language, and is ultimately down to the language authorities/users whether diacritical letters count separately or not. Some examples (please correct me if I've mistaken anything): (Modern) English: 26 letters; A-Z. ÆÐÞŒǷȜſꝛ are no longer letters, replaced with alternative letters or digraphs French: 26 letters; A-Z. ÀÂÇÉÈÊËÎÏÔÙÛÜŸ are letters with diacritics. Æ and Œ are digraphs German: 26 letters; A-Z. ÄÖÜ are letters with diacritics. ẞ is a ligature Dutch: 26 letters; A-Z. IJ is a digraph Spanish: 27 letters; A-Z + Ñ. LL is a digraph Danish, Norwegian: 29 letters: A-Z + ÆØÅ Swedish, Finnish: 29 letters; A-Z + ÅÄÖ. Finnish Š and Ž aren't letters and are replaced with digraphs Icelandic: 32 letters; A-Z - CQWZ + ÁÉÍÓÚÝ + ÐÞÆÖ (all letters) Hungarian: 44 letters; A-Z + ÁÉÍÓÖŐÚÜŰ + Cs, Dz, Dzs, Gy, Ly, Ny, Sz, Ty, Zs (all letters)
      - kalleboo 2y ago
        Also with Swedish, until 2006, W wasn't a letter but was just a variant of V, and sorted as if it was a V (so Ws were mixed in with the Vs in an index)
    - munch117 2y ago
      Even in German, mixing up o and ö or u and ü is still a spelling error. They sound very different, even if they are in some formal sense the same letter.
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        The real question is how Germans spell in contexts where it's not easy to add those diacritical marks. Do they omit them, or take the extra effort to put them in / replace them with some digraphs? My own language has several diacrititics that completely change the pronunciation (ă for schwa, â and î for a vowel that has no equivalent in English, ș for sh, ț for the zz from pizza), and is otherwise very phonetically written. Still, when writing in informal contexts on English keyboards, people generally just use a/i/s/t and rely on context to make it clear which word is meant. In old SMS writing, they would sometimes use sh and tz, but still a/i. So even though the diacritics fundamentally change pronunciation, and make a few words indistinguishable, they are not critical to the understanding of a text and local readers don't fully require them.

mr_toad 2y ago

It’s not a different letter, it’s the same letter with a diacritic. It might be incorrect when writing in Icelandic but in English it’s no more incorrect than using cafe instead of café.

Symbiote 2y ago
In that case, the tail on the J is just a decoration of an I, and we can write Iack Iones.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
munch117 is right; it's a different letter. Compare French é and è, different vowels with different spellings, to pinyin é and è, identical vowels with different diacritically-marked tones. The French vowels don't have diacritics any more than i and j do. That's a graphemic definition of "letter". There is an alternative, collation order, but in Icelandic that will also tell you that o and ö are two different letters, and ö sorts after þ while o sorts before it.
- simiones 2y ago
  The French definitely don't consider those to be different letters - they are e with an acute accent and a grave accent respectively; an accent is a type of diacritic mark. There's also a circumflex accent in French, and several other vowels can take accents. They even have two other diacritic marks, the trema (two dots) and the cedilla. This is apparently different in Icelandic, where indeed ö is considered a separate letter, not an o with an umlaut/two dots. But this is simply a convention of Icelandic typography - German for example also uses ö in certain words, but they do consider it an o with an umlaut.
  - amiga386 2y ago
    It depends on the language, and is ultimately down to the language authorities/users whether diacritical letters count separately or not. Some examples (please correct me if I've mistaken anything): (Modern) English: 26 letters; A-Z. ÆÐÞŒǷȜſꝛ are no longer letters, replaced with alternative letters or digraphs French: 26 letters; A-Z. ÀÂÇÉÈÊËÎÏÔÙÛÜŸ are letters with diacritics. Æ and Œ are digraphs German: 26 letters; A-Z. ÄÖÜ are letters with diacritics. ẞ is a ligature Dutch: 26 letters; A-Z. IJ is a digraph Spanish: 27 letters; A-Z + Ñ. LL is a digraph Danish, Norwegian: 29 letters: A-Z + ÆØÅ Swedish, Finnish: 29 letters; A-Z + ÅÄÖ. Finnish Š and Ž aren't letters and are replaced with digraphs Icelandic: 32 letters; A-Z - CQWZ + ÁÉÍÓÚÝ + ÐÞÆÖ (all letters) Hungarian: 44 letters; A-Z + ÁÉÍÓÖŐÚÜŰ + Cs, Dz, Dzs, Gy, Ly, Ny, Sz, Ty, Zs (all letters)
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      Also with Swedish, until 2006, W wasn't a letter but was just a variant of V, and sorted as if it was a V (so Ws were mixed in with the Vs in an index)
  - munch117 2y ago
    Even in German, mixing up o and ö or u and ü is still a spelling error. They sound very different, even if they are in some formal sense the same letter.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      The real question is how Germans spell in contexts where it's not easy to add those diacritical marks. Do they omit them, or take the extra effort to put them in / replace them with some digraphs? My own language has several diacrititics that completely change the pronunciation (ă for schwa, â and î for a vowel that has no equivalent in English, ș for sh, ț for the zz from pizza), and is otherwise very phonetically written. Still, when writing in informal contexts on English keyboards, people generally just use a/i/s/t and rely on context to make it clear which word is meant. In old SMS writing, they would sometimes use sh and tz, but still a/i. So even though the diacritics fundamentally change pronunciation, and make a few words indistinguishable, they are not critical to the understanding of a text and local readers don't fully require them.