From: Karen Mercedes
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Subject: Re: The obsolescence of the umlaut (was: Musical Theatre Fachs?)
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

>ACH!!!!!!BruderLEIN, with the double dots that my computer won't
>producte.....I

I guess you hadn't heard. Time is running out for the umlaut and other
weird German diacriticals. Germany is officially revising how it
represents the language, and one of the revisions is to move to the
practice of representing the vowel sounds that used to be indicated by the
umlaut by following the "umlauted" vowel with the letter "e" (as has long
been done in the Americanised spelling of "Schoenberg"). Thus,
"Bruederlein" will be the correct "New German" spelling.

I mention this because it makes it much easier to transcribe German in
ASCII (which, I suspect, is the real reason for the revision). Similarly,
that weird German diacritical for the double-s (which has been used less
and less, anyway) will now be replaced by the "ss" (sorry - couldn't avoid
that in-questionable-taste pun).

KM
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There is delight in singing,
tho' none hear Beside the singer.
- Walter Savage Landor
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