[Wikipedia-l] Pronunciation guides (Was Re: Oliver is Lir II [...])

Mon Nov 25 02:40:18 UTC 2002

The very word diacritic is Anglocentric.  

The Spaniards don't put diacritical tildes on some of their N's, they
have two separate letters in their alphabet, one identified with the
same Roman N as our letter N and another (that looks like an N with a
squiggle over it) identified with the Iberian pronunciation of Latin
words with NN in them.

The Norwegians don't have an A and another A with a little diacritical
degree sign on top, an O and another O with a diacritical slash
through it, an A and and E and then an AE diacritically stuck
together, they have three letters in their alphabet that we don't have
in ours.

I mention this only to point out that this whole banal 
eliminate-English-from-the-English-encyclopedia movement is doomed due
to the incredible complexity of determining the "right" way as opposed
to the basic simplicity of dealing with the issues using the tools
provided by our own language, combined with a decent respect for the
sensitivities and sensibilities of those who don't speak English.  

It was most interesting to see on [[Talk:Dienbienphu]] that there is a
controversy in Viet Nam over which Vietnames orthography should be
used.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88 