this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
104 points (95.6% liked)

YUROP

1089 readers
62 users here now

A laid back community for good news, pictures and general discussions among people living in Europe.

Other European communities

Other casual communities:

Language communities

Cities

Countries

founded 7 months ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Spain isn't highlighted for any of á, é, í, ó, ú. Any other mistakes people notice?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The Netherlands should be highlighted for ë but isn't

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (5 children)

ï, ö, ü, ä as well (as a diaeresis, not an umlaut)

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

And for à, as in "30 à 50 wilde varkens".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Also é and è: crème, café, etc. Words that originate from France, but they’re used in the Netherlands as well. We also use the accent aigu for emphasis. Also ê for maîtresse, crêpe, etc.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

They've split Finland pretty arbitrarily into areas where (supposedly) Swedish speakers are found for 'å', but there's really no reason for it. The letter is a part of the Finnish alphabet and taught to everyone in school, so it should cover the whole country I think.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Ireland should be highlighted for Éé

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

All Polish letters are included. But I don't understand, why a small piece of the ocean is marked along with Poland in "Ż".

Edit: I checked, it's Malta.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] AI_toothbrush 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think it excludes it because é is only used in words from french and not swedish words.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But some words aren't spelt with é in French. Tupé (toupee) is spelt toupet in French. The word is a loanword, but the letter isn't.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

English definitely uses æ even if rare

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Is there a higher resolution version of this?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Are you viewing this version? Sometimes preview links get funky

https://files.catbox.moe/4t2rzv.png

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Scharf S ẞuperiority

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Greek be like "Μην τολμήσεις να πείς οτι χρησιμοποιούμε Λατινικά!"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The Griko people in southern Italy use Latin alphabet though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Weird that France has both œ and æ. I only ever saw the latter in Nordic languages, but apparently it is occasionally used in French.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

æ is in purely Latin words like ex æquo, et cætera, or curriculum vitæ, that's all. œ appears in œil (eye) so you see that a lot more commonly already, but I can't think of any other word that uses it off the top of my head (beside other derivated words like œillères). (pardon the puns)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

œuf and chœur as well, I suppose? Though I don't know if that is how they are commonly spelled

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

You're correct. Chœur is chorus and cœur is heart BTW.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Sœur is pretty common too. And bœuf.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Which means that æ ends up also appearing in English in those same Latin words (although they're possibly more lax with alternate spellings).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

It appears (but now rarely) in the very English and not at all Latin word encyclopædia.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Wikipedia gives examples of "curriculum vitæ" and "et cætera." We use those both as loanwords in English, but I've only seen it as the separate letters "ae," not the ligature æ.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I assume direct loanwords are excluded from the list.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

The Nordic languages use ö or ø instead, in Swedish also ä is used instead of æ.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Ëë is definitely also used in the Netherlands

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Nobody:

Spain: Ññ

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Team ß 😎

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Czech and Slovakian so similar lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's so similar it's basically two accents of one language...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nowhere near that similar. But close second.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

It's more similar than Scottish English to California English.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm Italian and I've never in my life seen "î", I wouldn't even know how to read it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

According to German Wikipedia it is old spelling and thus, no wonder you didn't come across it:

In Italian, the circumflex used to be used primarily in the pluralisation of words with a final -io to mark the coincidence of two -ii: il principio "the principle" → i principî, in contrast to i principi, the plural of il principe "the prince". In addition to principî, there was also the full spelling principii, which was not pronounced correctly. Today, the words for "principles" and "princes" are spelt principi without distinction.

(translated using DeepL)

According to the English article, it is also used in Emilian and Friulian. In both, a long vovel is indicated with a circumflex.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

But I have come across other old spellings, like "j" used in diphthongs in place of "i", like in "jeri" (old spelling for "ieri", "yesterday") or in "naja" (old word for compulsory military service time). So it must be even older/rarer than that, and I would still say "j" it's not an Italian letter because nobody uses it exept to write "Jesolo" but that's a name, not a regular word.

Fun fact: because of the old usage of "j" some text to speech are "broken". The one on railway speakers always reads "RailJet" as "Railiet" which sounds funny.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Whoever made this, thanks for including Iceland

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Diaereses and grave accents are used in English too, strictly speaking, just not seen very often because English typing apparatus tends to lack a way of typing them easily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%88 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8B https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/co%C3%B6perate

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh thank the gods for UTF-8

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That's just the encoding, you want to thank unicode.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Now do the same but sort by country.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Slovak is pretty interesting in this aspect, you basically have this: á, ä, č, ď, é, í, ĺ, ľ, ň, ó, ô, ŕ, š, ť, ú, ý, ž

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

á, é, í, ó, ú are all used in Spanish, but not listed, which is confusing.

load more comments
view more: next ›