# Diacritics (written accents) in English



## Margash

Hi!

I'm trying the grammar forum for the first thing so I hope I'm doing this correctly.  When translating from Spanish to English, should accents be eliminated or not?  I.e., José, Museo de la Charrería, etc.

Thanks in advance for your help!

m


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## cuchuflete

Greetings Margash,
Your thread has been moved from Gramática to English Only.

The answer has two contradictory parts.

Names that carry accents in Spanish, such as Museo de la Charrería, can and should keep their accents, unless the entire name is customarily translated to English, as
Museo del Prado=> The Prado Museum.

Names such as José are a potential problem, as the name has become quite common in American English, without the accent.  I would keep the accent if you are using it to refer to a person who is accustomed to using the accent, whether they are Peruano, Español or a citizen of the U.S.

You might wait for British English comments, which may be different.


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## WestSideGal

Agreed with cuchuflete, although more and more throughout the US the Spanish language accent is accepted and practiced in the pronunciation of names (in particular) and geographic locations.  This is also evident in local news broadcasts where Hispanic television reporters use Spanish-language pronunciation to announce themselves.


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## cuchuflete

I don't disagree with WestSideGal, but perhaps I wasn't clear.  All my prior comments were about written language, rather than spoken words.  I would be upset if the English pronunciation did not maintain the accent in a name such as José Ordoñez, whether or not the written form carried the é and ñ.


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## sdgraham

1. Once upon a time, English was written on typewriters that had no capability to properly apply diacritical marks, that is now changing because of the ease with which they can be used in modern writing software..
2. Unfortunately, most English speakers usually have no idea where to put the marks and sometimes tend to fling them about in forlorn hope that they will stick in the appropriate spot.
3. I do not disagree with WestSideGal, but out here, the so-called reporters on television are primarily Anglos, despite a significant (and growing) Hispanic population and they regularly mangle the pronunciation of Spanish words.


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## Æsop

English is one of the few languages written in the Roman alphabet that employs no diacritical marks of any kind for native words.  In text consisting entirely of English, especially non-specialized text for general readerships, it is common to ignore all such marks in any foreign names or words that might appear, regardless of how important they might be in that language.  In specialized works, whose readers could be expected to be familiar with another language or languages, it is more common to retain the native spellings.  Even if a work is being translated, if some or many of the readers are likely to be familiar with the original spellings, an editor or publisher may choose to go to the trouble of including all of the relevant accent marks.  Margash did not say what he was translating, or for whom.  If he is translating historical, political, or literary documents for historians, political scientists, or students of Spanish literature, then the diacriticals should be preserved.  If his target readership is second- or later-generation Hispanic-Americans who might find reading English easier than reading Spanish but would be familiar enough with Spanish to appreciate correct spelling of Spanish names, including the relevant diacriticals, then they should be used.  If the readers are expected to be non-academic English monoglots (or others who know no Spanish), then "José" instead of "Jose" and "Agustín" instead of "Agustin" is probably not worth the trouble.

Whatever is done must be done consistently.  If any diacriticals are used, they must be used in all names in which they occur, and in every use of a particular name.


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## budt

I agree with Æsop. As you can see, I have used the ligature with which his name begins, although this is optional in English these days.

sdgraham's point about technical improvements that at least allow diacritical marks to be used in Emglish-speaking countries is a good one, but even today this is frequently a problem with teletext services supporting TV broadcasts.


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## natkretep

If you're talking about print, I think accents should be maintained in names and recent borrowings from the language. This is well established in French names, eg _Fauré_. It is less well established in common nouns, so in English we write _naïve _and _naive_.

Pronunciation is more difficult to police than spelling. I think an approximation is acceptable. An English /r/, as opposed to a uvular trill etc., and a fine diphthong /eI/ is fine for Fauré.


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## ewie

I agree in principle with Señor Cuchí _[#2] _about foreign names that are very long-established in English _without_ diacriticals.

_However_ ... now I don't know if this is pure imagining, or wishful thinking, or what, but I would say that in British printed English there is a tendency toward including original diacriticals _wherever possible_: as SDG said _[#5]_, this has become very easy. Perhaps (if this is actually true) it has something to do with our geographical/political proximity to a host of nations whose various languages have diacriticals ~ maybe we're just more _aware _of them, and more alive to the fact that they're not just there for show; or perhaps it has something to do with Political Correctness ~ _"Do you think the French would be offended if we put _Cezanne_ rather than _Cézanne_?"_

Following on from another thing SDG said: I ~ personally ~ would prefer to read _Jóse_ than _Jose_ ~ the diacritical may be in the wrong place but its presence does at least mark the word out as a foreign one, and would prevent me from reading the name to rhyme with _those_. (And at least the writer has made an _effort_)

Erm, I think I had something else to say ... but I've forgotten it now.


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## Brioche

ewie said:


> Following on from another thing SDG said: I ~ personally ~ would prefer to read _Jóse_ than _Jose_ ~ the diacritical may be in the wrong place but its presence does at least mark the word out as a foreign one, and would prevent me from reading the name to rhyme with _those_. (And at least the writer has made an _effort_)
> 
> Erm, I think I had something else to say ... but I've forgotten it now.




_Jóse _is wrong on two counts.
If the stress fell on the o, there would be no written accent.
In fact, the stress falls on e, so in order to pronounce the word correctly it should be written José.

As a general rule, if you want people to pronounce words correctly, you should spell them correctly.  The diacritics are as much part of the spelling as the letters.


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## Loob

I agree with ewie that there is a tendency in UK printed material to use original diacritics where possible.

Not sure I agree that a wrongly-placed accent is better than none


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## ewie

Brioche said:


> _Jóse _is wrong on two counts.
> If the stress fell on the o, there would be no written accent.
> In fact, the stress falls on e, so in order to pronounce the word correctly it should be written José.


I'm fully aware of this, Brio.  Perhaps you're already fully aware that I'm fully aware


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## Ynez

ewie, maybe your confusion about Jóse is because we normally pronounce that name as Jose (stressed the way you liked) even if the real name and writing is José. 

As for the general subject, seeing that some English speakers bother to write tildes, it would be good if you write them, Margash, because it is easier for you.


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## Wilma_Sweden

ewie said:


> the diacritical may be in the wrong place but its presence does at least mark the word out as a foreign one, and would prevent me from reading the name to rhyme with _those_. (And at least the writer has made an _effort_)


I disagree, too. If you cannot put the diacritics in the right place, you might as well not put them there at all. As mentioned, in Spanish, the accents are used to mark deviations from the regular stress patterns. In German and Swedish, o and ö are different vowels altogether. The former England manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson, and Sweden's ex-PM, Göran Persson, have both had to put up with the Slavic name of Goran in international press, but in these modern times when there are no technical limitations and the old accent-less typewriters are long gone and obsolete, I am wondering whether it would be too much to ask the English-language press to spell foreign names correctly?

/Wilma


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## Ynez

Wilma, I personally think English speakers are more respectful of other languages than some others, like Spanish speakers, for example. In our case we are just terrible at writing and pronouncing foreign names.


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## kalamazoo

In the biomedical literature in English that I am familiar with (in the US, the UK, Australia and so forth), names of authors in references don't have any diacritical marks no matter what the languages are.  Also certainly in the US, lots of people have "foreign names" of all kinds (whatever that means) and don't normally use accents or diacritical marks.  Mostly they either change the spelling (My Austrian father-in-law became "George" instead of "Georg") or use an Americanized pronunciation if the name is unusual or just use a fairly standard pronunciation (e.g. "Ho-ZAY for Jose).  California where I live is full of Spanish names and most of the pronunciations are kind of half-English, half-Spanish anyway.  For instance "Vallejo" is pronounced "Valet-ho" so it has an English "v" and "ll" (which would be different in Spanish) but a more Spanish-y "j".


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## Margash

Thanks everyone.  I'm translating tourist brochures.  The readers will either be native English speakers (Latin or not) and other foreigners that do not speak Spanish.  I'll keep the tildes.

m


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## Æsop

Although computers and word processing programs have made it easier to include various diacriticals than it was in the typewriter era, keep in mind that English keyboards and the associated software are NOT designed for addition of diacriticals.  On a Swedish keyboard, three of the keys are devoted to Ä/ä, Å/å, and Ö/ö; on a keyboard designed and manufacturers for use with English, those keys have other symbols assigned to them.  Many users of word processing software in English don't know how to access or use elements of character sets beyond what they see on their keyboard.  This is true of older adults, certainly.  A number of my contemporaries have expressed wonder and suggested that I must be some kind of technical expert when I have explained to them how to use the <Alt> key and numeric keyboard to insert characters with various diacriticals.  I doubt that children, who are learning to use QWERTY keyboards at a much younger age than was true of my generation, are learning about this trick, either, since they don't need the diacriticals to write English in school.  Perhaps, if they study a foreign language in high school or college, their teachers insist on their learning it there.

Moreover, the basic Windows character set, at least, does not include all of the letters with diacritical marks that might be encountered in all languages.  The Western European languages, even those used by relatively few people like Icelandic and Faeroese, are covered; that includes Spanish, so that not only are the diacriticals (acute accent over any letter plus Ñ/ñ) included, but so are the upside down punctuation marks (¿, ¡) and the superior o and a for ordinals (ª,º).  But you will not find in the Windows character set, accessible through the <Alt> key and numeric keypad, all of the diacriticals necessary for languages that use the Roman alphabet such as Magyar, Polish, Czech, Slovakian, and Turkish.


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## johndot

If you are writing for an audience which doesn’t care (or doesn’t know) about accents, then it does no harm to include them if you can do so correctly.
 
If you are writing for an audience which _does_ care, then they should be used—and it’s no bother to do so.
 
Use the accents, I would say: it’s a no-lose situation.


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## Wilma_Sweden

I'm very familiar with the technical issues and difficulties involving accented characters and the tendency for the average user to get daunted by any advanced features above and beyond the actual typing! 

However, I mentioned the press - presumably a newspaper is full of printing professionals and IT people who could easily supply users with easy-to-access features or even set up automated spelling correction so the end user didn't even have to worry about it. They also have all sorts of professional editing software at their disposal. 

What I'm saying should be understood in the context of *professional *writers who are usually in an editorial context where their typos and mis-spellings are corrected before their work is made available to the readership, which is more or less global for news sites such as BBC, CNN or MSNBC.

I don't much care what Jenny in Paris, Texas writes in her blog or how children write in their English school essays. 

/Wilma


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## Æsop

American newspapers are losing so much business to the Internet that they are cutting staff wherever they can.  They are getting rid of editors and proofreaders and, more and more, printing directly from whatever their reporters write.  Thinking about this, it might have been easier to add diacriticals in the typewriter era; the writer or reported could add them by hand and leave it up to the Linotype operator or compositor to get them into type.   As modern technology has made it easier to "eliminate the middleman" in the process of going from the writer's ideas to the printed page, whether in a book or a newspaper, a greater burden has been placed on the original wordsmith.  Meticulous publishers that can still charge high prices for their products can still afford editors and proofreaders to make sure that accent marks and other features are used correctly, names are spelled correctly even if they don't involve diacriticals, etc.  In fact they had better keep employing these quality control steps if they are going to expect customers to pay their prices.  But separate editing and proofreading departments are probably going to become less and less common.


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## kalamazoo

I am still thinking of the topic of reference lists in biomedical journals, which might potentially be full of all kinds of names. It would seem pretty strange to me to use Swedish symbols, German symbols, Spanish symbols and French symbols for each name as appropriate in the original language, when the same symbol could potentially mean something quite different depending on what the original language was. A c with a cedilla in Turkish is different from a c with a cedilla in French.  Turkish includes a dotless i and an s with a cedilla too, which most languages don't have. And how does "Jose" write his name in France? Does he use an accent mark?  Suppose a biomedical article is written by a research group in France that included some French, some Swedish and some Spanish individuals?  Do we use the French spelling of the Spanish name?  How do we even find out what that is?  It seems to me that trying to use the correct diacriticals from the original language is opening up a can of worms.  Again, I don't think this is a US thing because British biomedical journals also don't use the diacriticals in references.


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## languageGuy

Brioche said:


> _Jóse _is wrong on two counts.
> If the stress fell on the o, there would be no written accent.
> In fact, the stress falls on e, so in order to pronounce the word correctly it should be written José.


 
Definitely true in Spanish. Not all Joses are.


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## Hermocrates

I am, admittedly, the obsessive type (philologist here! ), but reading a text in English in which diacritics have been ignored makes me cringe - the same way so-called "leetspeak" or chatspeak make the average reader cringe, for instance.

After all, a letter with a diacritic sign is a _different_ letter compared to one without. They only happen to _look_ similar, but they are actually _different_ phonemic entities. Removing the diacritic sign means turning it arbitrarily into a different phoneme. 

Would familiarising with them really traumatise the average English-speaking reader? I don't think so. 
But that's just my humble, personal opinion, for what it is worth. 


Rye


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## Æsop

Because English uses no accents or other diacriticals whatsoever, I think that many readers of English who know no other languages would be upset, alienated, or exasperated by them.  They would think they are being expected to understand something about which they know nothing, or that the writer or publisher is showing off superior knowledge and condescending to them.  Perhaps this is different from the reaction of readers of language that do use diacriticals, even if the diacriticals are not used in the reader's particular language.  For example, Spanish does not use a grave accent or a circumflex, but seeing a French word that uses one of them might not seem so strange or threatening, since Spanish routinely uses the acute accent and tilde.  I think that to many readers of English, letters with diacriticals might be as strange and threatening as Cyrillic or Greek.

[...]


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## Hermocrates

Æsop said:


> Because English uses no accents or other diacriticals whatsoever, I think that many readers of English who know no other languages would be upset, alienated, or exasperated by them.  They would think they are being expected to understand something about which they know nothing, or that the writer or publisher is showing off superior knowledge and condescending to them.



But doesn't that sound a little overprotective, maybe?  I would be inclined to think that foreign words _per se_, (e.g. Latin, French or German loan-words) can be perceived as intimidating and probably underlying a condescending attitude on the writer or publisher's part. But diacritics, in my opinion, are so tiny and discreet they may be easily skipped/overlooked by the reader who is unfamiliar with them. 

Not to mention that, by now, thanks to IKEA and their exotically named furniture I guess many an English speaker has experienced (and survived) his/her baptism of fire in the land of alien-looking diacritics. 

Rye


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## sdgraham

languageGuy said:


> Definitely true in Spanish. Not all Joses are.



This is an interesting discussion about a situation I consider hopeless.

Note that when José is pronounced by the French, it comes out DZH0H-zay (if you doubt me, listen to Bizet's _Carmen_.) Keeping the diacritical is no solution to prevent mangling names as they cross ethnic boundaries.

I have a friend, born in El Salvador, by the name of Luís. Even he has given up and tells Americans his name is "Louis" (American, not French pronunciation) because that's the way they're going to pronounce it anyway.


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## Wordsmyth

I often find myself including non-English words in English text, in a professional context, and I always keep any accents and diacriticals — for reasons that have been eloquently expressed by ewie (post #9) and ryenart (post #24). 

Although personally I won't join ewie in his "J*ó*se" thing, there may be something in it : see my cousin's grandmother's comments below. 



Æsop said:


> Because English uses no accents or other diacriticals whatsoever, I think that many readers of English who know no other languages would be upset, alienated, or exasperated by them. They would think they are being expected to understand something about which they know nothing, or that the writer or publisher is showing off superior knowledge and condescending to them. [...]


 
Hmm, the word paranoia suddenly flashed into my mind. Of course, they might think the same thing just because the writer used a foreign word at all!

So I put it to the test (a sample of one, so not statistically conclusive). I called my cousin's grandmother, a spry 90-year old English lady who has no grasp of any other languages and has only once been out of the UK (briefly) in her life. She is however aware of those funny little marks you get on certain foreign words, because she sees them in English books, newspapers and magazines. She thinks they're very useful because they tell her that the word probably isn't pronounced as if it were English, and she'll ask around to find out how it should be pronounced. 

Not much upset, alienation or exasperation there.

Ws


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## kalamazoo

It's not all that easy to familiarize oneself with all the various possible meanings of diacritical marks in all different languages that use them. How many people here know what the Turkish diacritical marks mean, for example?  And the same diacritical mark means different things in different languages.  So I don't think people should be condescending about this.


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## sdgraham

Æsop said:


> Although computers and word processing programs have made it easier to include various diacriticals than it was in the typewriter era, keep in mind that English keyboards and the associated software are NOT designed for addition of diacriticals.



Well, yes and no. MS Windows provides a keyboard driver for the U.S. keyboard layout that makes it very easy to use all diacriticals of Western European languages. All one has to do is select it in the set-up routine.

If you search Google for U.S. International Keyboard Driver, you will find multiple entries and explanations. I use it as my default driver because I write messages and documents in more than one language.

Additionally, Wikipedia has a good section on keyboard layouts and drivers here.


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## kalamazoo

By the way, with respect to sdgraham's friend named Luis, he might have less trouble with his name in Los Angeles or someplace with a pretty large Hispanic population and lots of exposure to "Hispanic" names.


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## sdgraham

Wilma_Sweden said:


> I am wondering whether it would be too much to ask the English-language press to spell foreign names correctly?



Speaking as one who retired after 28 years with the world's largest news-gathering organization and one who reviewed countless applications from would-be journalists, I can guarantee that except for some notable exceptions, you'd have more success trying to teach a pig to sing. (Speaking for the U.S., of course)

_Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's doomed to failure and it annoys the pig.- anonymous._


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## languageGuy

There is one rule concerning diacritical marks that I have found very useful. If the menu has *crème brûlée* correctly spelled, order it. Those who pay attention to such marks also pay attention to their food.


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## Wordsmyth

Good point, languageGuy

When I work with non-French people who write French words and names, I've noticed that the ones who make the effort to get accents right (or to bother with them at all!) tend to be those whose numerical/analytical work is the most reliable, and whose general communication skills (clarity, effective messaging, ...) are good.

So maybe that's another reason for putting accents. Otherwise some people may see it as sloppiness, and read that over to a more general judgement — and not order your _crème brûlée!!_ 

Ws


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## timpeac

I think I see a general tendency to try to keep accent in foreign words and also an almost shocking ability to use them _wrongly_. In British English texts we sometimes come across French words or quotes (much more commonly than other languages) and more often than not - I joke not - there will be some mistake in the spelling or accents somewhere. So I'd say we try to use the accents but have no more success in using them correctly than spelling the original word anyway - which ain't much. It reminds me of a biography of French singer Serge Gainsbourg I once read in English, written by an English author for an English audience and I had to abandon it part-way through because my blood pressure couldn't stand the fact that there was a mistake in every bl**dy quote!


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## Wilma_Sweden

kalamazoo said:


> It would seem pretty strange to me to use Swedish symbols, German symbols, Spanish symbols and French symbols for each name as appropriate in the original language, when the same symbol could potentially mean something quite different depending on what the original language was.


I would have thought that a name identifies an individual, who spells his/her name in a certain way regardless of language. When they publish a scientific article, they will most likely be submitting it using the original spelling of their name. When others cite them, even if the article is in English, the source citation should spell the author's name correctly. If the author's own spelling includes diacritical marks, they should be included also. You don't need to know the authors' native languages to copy their own spelling of their names, as long as they are using the Roman alphabet. 

However, I have accepted that pigs might fly (or indeed, sing) before news media start using diacritics in foreign names, although I did find a few mentions of Pelé, the football player, with the proper final é even in the Guardian's web site. All hope is not lost! 



Wordsmyth said:


> I called my cousin's grandmother, a spry 90-year old English lady who has no grasp of any other languages and has only once been out of the UK (briefly) in her life. She is however aware of those funny little marks you get on certain foreign words, because she sees them in English books, newspapers and magazines. She thinks they're very useful because they tell her that the word probably isn't pronounced as if it were English, and she'll ask around to find out how it should be pronounced.


What a sweetheart! 

/Wilma


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## Æsop

sdgraham said:


> Well, yes and no. MS Windows provides a keyboard driver for the U.S. keyboard layout that makes it very easy to use all diacriticals of Western European languages. All one has to do is select it in the set-up routine.
> 
> If you search Google for U.S. International Keyboard Driver, you will find multiple entries and explanations. I use it as my default driver because I write messages and documents in more than one language.
> 
> Additionally, Wikipedia has a good section on keyboard layouts and drivers here.


 
I don't know how I stumbled on it, but I learned the use of the <Alt> key with the numeric keypad years ago.  I was delighted, because I wanted to spell foreign names correctly.  But I've never read or heard before of what sdgraham is describing.  I'll bet it is not well known among individual users of Window computers in the U.S., although organizations that want their staff to exploit it might have seen that it was installed in workstations and have trained the staff to use it.  This is not something that you are likely to run into just through using a computer.  There are other approaches, too, like the Insert,Symbol function in Word and <Ctl>-W in Word Perfect, but you have to either look for them or be taught them, and I doubt that either would be covered in an introductory word processing course.

I am going to have to remember to check this out.


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## kalamazoo

I am pretty sure that all the English-language biomedical literature that I am aware of does not use the diacritical marks for spelling of names in references, regardless of what the original document says, and a reference data base like Medline doesn't include the diacritical marks. Now I will have to check!

I did some very preliminary investigations. I looked at a few articles in the European Journal of Pediatrics and compared their listings in Medline. Several articles had French or German authors and there were some umlauts and accent marks which were also present in the Medline listing. One article had a lot of Turkish authors (Turkish typically uses a lot of diacritical markings).  None of the Turkish names had the diacritical marks in the journal.  So maybe it depends on the language to some extent.  However another article with some Turkish authors did have some diacritical markings.  I was also reminded that sometimes people of Greek origin (either actual Greeks or Americans of Greek origin) have pretty clearly Turkish names, but without the diacritics in a suffix like -oglu, whereas a Turk with the same name would have the diacritical marking. So two people could have exactly the same name but write it differently.  I don't think this is that simple a situation!

My general take, getting back to the original question, is that there is not really any rule in English, but it's not a bad idea to use the diacritical marking that would be correct for the original.  However it's probably better not to be too compulsive about it!


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## Æsop

It occurs to me that in reference list schemes, the last names of the author(s), or of the primary author of each citation, is set in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.  Some languages that use diacritical marks don't use them with capital letters (French is an example).  I have a list of letters with diacriticals in the basic Windows character set and I don't see any combinations available in lower-case only, but perhaps the citations you have seen have omitted the diacriticals because of the use of all caps.


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## mplsray

kalamazoo said:


> I am still thinking of the topic of reference lists in biomedical journals, which might potentially be full of all kinds of names. It would seem pretty strange to me to use Swedish symbols, German symbols, Spanish symbols and French symbols for each name as appropriate in the original language, when the same symbol could potentially mean something quite different depending on what the original language was. A c with a cedilla in Turkish is different from a c with a cedilla in French. Turkish includes a dotless i and an s with a cedilla too, which most languages don't have. And how does "Jose" write his name in France? Does he use an accent mark? Suppose a biomedical article is written by a research group in France that included some French, some Swedish and some Spanish individuals? Do we use the French spelling of the Spanish name? How do we even find out what that is? It seems to me that trying to use the correct diacriticals from the original language is opening up a can of worms. Again, I don't think this is a US thing because British biomedical journals also don't use the diacriticals in references.


 
I can't speak for biomedical journals, but I do volunteer work in a French-language library here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I can say from experience that the editors of books translated from a language other than French do use the diactritics of the original language when printing the name of the author--and this includes books for children.


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## sdgraham

Warning!!!

Earlier in this thread, I mentioned the installation of the U.S. International keyboard driver for Microsoft Windows that enables the user to generate all the diacritical marks for Western European languages.

*If* you install this keyboard driver and then attempt to generate a character by the old DOS method of holding down the ALT key and then typing in the decimal value of the character, *AND* you use the right-hand ALT key *AND* that sequence contains a '2,' the display on your computer screen will change to upside-down because the system reads the '2' as a down arrow. (Tested for Windows XP) (With the normal U.S. driver, only a Ctrl-Alt-DnArrow will do that)

To get your screen back, type Ctrl-Alt-UpArrow or Right-Alt-3

I found this out the hard way today when I tried to generate a '{' which is a character value 123.

Feel free to send me a PM for more information.

sdg


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## Wordsmyth

I think sdgraham's post #46 illustrates the situation well. You start with handwriting: you have no reason to omit diacritics, and every reason to include them. Technological progress (typewriters, early telecom systems, ...) comes with initial limitations; you can't reproduce all the accents, so you go without or find a workaround – but it's a compromise. Further progress (present-day computers) enables a return to 'normality' — so why persist in maintaining an artificial and inefficient compromise?

[...]

Ws


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## Æsop

In defense of the _Chicago Manual of Style_:

(1) I was referring to the 13th edition of 1982 that I have in my personal library; perhaps French practice, and even University of Chicago Press preference, has changed since then. I don't know whether there is a 14th edition or when it was published.
(2) The Chicago _Manual_ certainly does not pretend to be directive or definitive for French writers or publishers. However, the issue of this thread is what to do with accent marks and other diacriticals when writing or publishing *in English.*
(3) The Chicago _Manual_ is definitive only for publications of the University of Chicago Press. Because it provides is a systematic and well-considered set of rules for many aspects of academic or scholarly publishing, including citation and bibliographic formats, many publishers have adopted it rather than take the time to compile and distribute their own, but any publisher may make its own exceptions.


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## Jacobtm

So...

My spellcheck doesn't like "Bogota," preferring that I write "Bogotá". In Spanish, "Bogotá" is of course the correct spelling, but I'm writing in English. I wouldn't write "México" in English, even though that is the correct spelling of the country's name in Spanish. 

This issue goes to a general confusion I have with including foreign diacritics in English. Any guidance on this issue?


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## PaulQ

Yes, don't bother with diacritics except in a person's name or possibly where you are sending mail to a town in a country that doesn't have Zip/Post-Codes and it might otherwise be confused with somewhere else in the same country. That said, I have relatives in Köln/Cologne - (not  only a diacritic but a different spelling) I found that the post got through regardless of how I spelled the city's name.


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## Jacobtm

PaulQ said:


> Yes, don't bother with diacritics except in a person's name or possibly where you are sending mail to a town in a country that doesn't have Zip/Post-Codes and it might otherwise be confused with somewhere else in the same country. That said, I have relatives in Köln/Cologne - (not  only a diacritic but a different spelling) I found that the post got through regardless of how I spelled the city's name.



Dealing in a different country I would of course spell things their way, but my inclination is to eschew all foreign diacritics unless the phrase is something like _raison d'être_.

Though I have noticed that reading British publications, you lot are much more likely to use cliché, résumé, déjà vu, etc. wheras in the US it's quite odd to see that with words that are so common in English.


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## PaulQ

Hmmm... I think that media that use *cliché, résumé, déjà vu*,are somewhat conservative in their outlook to change. There was a time, 100 years ago, when it was quite common to see whole passages in Greek, German, French or Latin on the assumption that the reader would not have difficulty. Perhaps these diacritics are the vestiges of the idea of demonstrating that you speak another language and that your readers can - that and that you can find the right character on your keyboard. 

There may be some idea that e.g. *cliché* needs to be spelled that way otherwise people would say, "*cleech*" but that strangely ignores the fact that English spelling has little to do with the way a word is spoken.

If your observations on the differences between US and UK publications are so, then this is one area where I would follow the American system.


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## WyomingSue

Personally, because I love languages, in any language I write in all the diacritics that I know how to do. (And besides, I've been to Bogotá, so how could I leave off the accent?)  I remember laughing at San Jose (no accent now), California about 15-20 years ago when it was announced that the city of San José going to take off the accent in public documents and become (as I decided to pronounce it) San Joe-ss.  
An interesting case is the NFL football player, Pierre Garçon.  Wikipedia spells it Garçon, the announcers pronounce it that way, but even his own team (rather pathetically, I think) spells it Garcon on their web page.  At least he was able to get Garçon on his jersey:  http://www.jerseysman.com/images/NFL Jerseys Indianapolis Colts 85 Pierre GARCON blue.jpg
And nowadays, I mean, my teenage daughter can even type in a ¿ on her cell phone!  (I realize that's not a diacritic, properly, but it seems part of the "non-English" material.)  Let's have some fun in life:  üύÆáđŁũØ hurrah!


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## Tracer

I believe that if you're writing in English, then you should stick with what's available in English and not use diacritics or any other signs/symbols or words that are clearly foreign.  Trying to duplicate in English what's common in another language but totally unknown in English leads to all kinds of laughable situations.  If you try to be "fancy" for one thing, you'd have to have a keyboard that includes all the diacritics found in French, German, Swedish etc etc. It would be an enormous keyboard.  Not to mention language that don't use the Latin alphabet as their base.

[...]

Stick with English and do the best you can.


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## Einstein

PaulQ said:


> There may be some idea that e.g. *cliché* needs to be spelled that way otherwise people would say, "cleech" but that strangely ignores the fact that English spelling has little to do with the way a word is spoken.


This is a common view, but I think it's exaggerated. It's true that the number of illogically spelt (or illogically pronounced) words is enormous, but I still think a fair majority of words have a spelling that at least reflects tendencies, if not rules. People on seeing a new word will make a guess at the pronunciation based on its spelling; they may get it wrong but will not say something absolutely way out.
In the case of *cliché*, it's worth putting the accent simply to remind the reader that it *is* a foreign word and has a different pronunciation from what you'd expect from English tendencies. And as for *résumé*, it's again worth putting the accents just to distinguish from the English verb "resume", which is obviously pronounced differently.
Of course, we don't go to the lengths of writing Greek or Russian words in their own alphabet; that would _really _be going too far!

PS I don't want to be misunderstood here. I wouldn't oblige anyone to maintain all the diacritics from other languages, but neither would I make a rule of eliminating them. It's mainly a matter of convention with individual words, but in any case I don't see why we need to insulate ourselves against the "outside" world.


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## Gwan

It's a tricky one. I work in the urban studies field (although I don't claim to be an expert on it by any means), and unless it's my imagination, I seem to be seeing an increasing use of the "native" versions of city names, e.g. Bogotá, Lyon, and even quite radically different spellings (from the English perspective) such as Köln seem to be cropping up more often. And of course we had the "Torino" Olympics a while back. However, I agree that if Bogota is regarded as the standard English version of the name, it's not a mistake as such to leave off the accent.

If there is no established anglicized form of a word, however, I do like to see an accent. I know enough about Slavic languages, for example, to know that Slavoj Žižek would be pronounced differently than Zizek, so it's useful to have that information if I'm seeing his name for the first time (plus it's just nice to spell people's names right, as I'm sure you agree).


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## Tracer

I disagree.  If you write the correct *Žižek,* no American English reader would have any idea at all how to pronounce that, unless he was familiar with Slavic languages.


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## Gwan

Tracer said:


> I disagree.  If you write the correct *Žižek,* no American English reader would have any idea at all how to pronounce that, unless he was familiar with Slavic languages.



But someone who sees Zizek (and has no prior knowledge on the subject) will most likely pronounce it incorrectly, whether they are familiar with Slavic languages or not, since z and ž are not pronounced in the same way. So I would prefer to write it correctly - that way, the people who do know how to pronounce ž will know how it ought to be pronounced, and those who don't will presumably be no worse off in terms of pronouncing it correctly than if they had read 'Zizek'.


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## Tracer

I am an American English, speaker, I have no knowledge of Slavic languages and if I saw* Žižek *or *Zizek * I would pronounce both the same way (like in French "Je").  

I don't know if that is right or wrong.....the point is....writing the diacritics wouldn't help me an iota......In both cases, I would just take a guess as to how it is pronounced.  Bottom line......the diacritics do not help at all. (In addition, my computer board probably doesn't allow me to write the word with the diacritic). 

So, my argument remains.  If you're writing for an American audience, the use of the diacritic is totally unnecessary.


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## WyomingSue

Wow, check it out:  





> The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek turned up at Zuccotti Park to address the Occupy Wall Street demonstration on Sunday, offering up a seminar on Radicalism 101 for an appreciative crowd.


 From the New York Observer http://www.observer.com/2011/10/slavoj-zizek-speaks-to-occupy-wall-street/.
Never heard of the guy, but I would guess zhee-zhek.  Of course I have some Eastern European ancestors.  
But back to the Bogotá question, I would add, for the benefit of Tracer, that no special keyboard is required for most stuff.  Just click on the "insert symbol" button in Word.  I have it on my toolbar.  And á, é, ñ etc. are available by hitting CTL + whatever.  Not so hard.
Anyway, I think the rule is ... there is no rule.  Add them if you want to.  People who have a clue will appreciate it, and people who say "What the f*** is that weird worm thing over the n?" deserve a little private eye-roll when they're not looking.

[...]


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## Einstein

WyomingSue said:


> People who have a clue will appreciate it


and that's a good enough reason.


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## Gwan

WyomingSue said:


> Anyway, I think the rule is ... there is no rule.  Add them if you want to.  People who have a clue will appreciate it, and people who say "What the f*** is that weird worm thing over the n?" deserve a little private eye-roll when they're not looking.



Amusingly well said!


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## Tracer

Yes, there is no rule. Write them if you want to, but they are not required.

However, I STILL disagree with the "ease" with which it appears you suggest that one just has to push this or that on your keyboard and SHAZAM, there is the funny letter.  That's just not how it works in real life.

MOST keyboards in the USA do not have these diacritics or accents or anything on them UNLESS you ask for them to be there when you purchase it. My keyboard has Arabic letters instead, other will have Chinese and so on. 

By the way, the worm like thing on top of the Spanish N is called the "tilde". What it's called in Slavic, I have no idea. When I want to write MR in Spanish, I write
SENIOR...I just add the "i". If I were writing in SPANISH, that would be different. But if I'm writing in ENGLISH, that's what I do. 

Again, I come back again to my point: The vast majority of Americans would have no idea how the Spanish *ñ* (or any other diacritic) is pronounced, let alone the Slavic Z with the "tilde". (I don't know why people have a hard time accepting this fact......it's manifestly clear and obvious to me and I've repeated this 3 times now).


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## ewie

Having just re-read a large part of this pre-merger thread (which I found very easily by typing _diacritic_ into the search box), it seems to me the only conclusion that can be reached on the subject is that old EO favourite: _There is no agreement on this subject._


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## Wordsmyth

In such long threads, I rarely find anything new to add. However, some 'pro-diacritic' points don't seem to have been raised here (or I missed them!).

— Several posts suggest that most Americans/Brits/etc won't know how to pronounce words with diacritics; to which I say "Let them learn!". Did we all stop learning new things when we left school? Curious people will look up an English word they don't know in a dictionary (online these days: easy), or will ask someone else; others won't bother. The same applies to foreign words, with or without diacritics.

— Accents are not necessarily just a 'nice-to-have' pronunciation guide. In some languages (e.g. French), two words that are identical except for a diacritic can have two entirely different meanings. Someone looking up a foreign word they've found in an English text could be totally misled if the accent were missing.   

— The days of splendid isolation are gone. In times past, a foreign word used in an English publication would be read essentially by native English-speakers. These days, the international communication barriers are down, and an English text will often be read by non-native speakers, including those whose words have been borrowed — and to whom the lack of diacritics could be as disturbing as would a gross mis-spelling.

Ws


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## Myridon

Wordsmyth said:


> — Several posts suggest that most Americans/Brits/etc won't know how to pronounce words with diacritics; to which I say "Let them learn!". Did we all stop learning new things when we left school? Curious people will look up an English word they don't know in a dictionary (online these days: easy), or will ask someone else; others won't bother. The same applies to foreign words, with or without diacritics.


So now we must learn the orthography of every language in advance just in case someone should borrow a word from that language.  I suppose this goes for Cyrillic, katakana, kanji, etc. Someone might just start borrowing those words as well.



> — Accents are not necessarily just a 'nice-to-have' pronunciation guide. In some languages (e.g. French), two words that are identical except for a diacritic can have two entirely different meanings. Someone looking up a foreign word they've found in an English text could be totally misled if the accent were missing.


The few borrowed words that end up as homonyms due to loss of diacritics is far outnumbered by the "naturallly occuring" homonyms.  Must grizzly bèars beàr the weight of your edict?



> — The days of splendid isolation are gone. In times past, a foreign word used in an English publication would be read essentially by native English-speakers. These days, the international communication barriers are down, and an English text will often be read by non-native speakers, including those whose words have been borrowed — and to whom the lack of diacritics could be as disturbing as would a gross mis-spelling.


... to which I say "Let them learn!".  What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!


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## Wordsmyth

OK, Myridon, I guessed my points would provoke debate. So let me address your three objections: 





Myridon said:


> So now we must learn the orthography of every language in advance just in case someone should borrow a word from that language.  I suppose this goes for Cyrillic, katakana, kanji, etc. Someone might just start borrowing those words as well.



Not at all. If you re-read my suggestion, you'll see it was to look up *a word* you don't know, *when* you come across it. By your proposed logic, an English speaker would have to learn every word in the OED and Webster's, just in case he might see it someday!



Myridon said:


> The few borrowed words that end up as homonyms due to loss of diacritics is far outnumbered by the "naturallly occuring" homonyms. Must grizzly bèars beàr the weight of your edict?



I looked hard for an edict in my post: I couldn't find one! As for being outnumbered, well, just because my garden has several patches of weeds, I don't go out and deliberately sow some more! Please note that my comments referred to words that are generally still considered as foreign words, not to words that have stood the test of time and become fully integrated into the English language: I don't suggest that hotel must still retain its ô, for example.



Myridon said:


> ... to which I say "Let them learn!". What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!


 OK, touché! (or would you prefer _touche ["toosh"]_? ). 

Ws


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## Myridon

_Touche_ is fine. It took me 5 minutes to do "bèars beàr".


Wordsmyth said:


> I looked hard for an edict in my post: I couldn't find one! As for being outnumbered, well, just because my garden has several patches of weeds, I don't go out and deliberately sow some more! Please note that my comments referred to words that are generally still considered as foreign words, not to words that have stood the test of time and become fully integrated into the English language: I don't suggest that hotel must still retain its ô, for example.


"Edict" was merely picked for the sound in the sentence. You are certainly suggesting that we do things a certain way.
I'm not saying that this argument isn't valid, but that it is a weak argument for the reason I explained. In the unlikely chance that there should happen to be a dried cranberry in one box of raisins and someone should who prefers dried cranberries to raisins should happen find that box, there should be special rules about all dried fruit.


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## PaulQ

From OED: "1973    LSA Bull. Mar. 28   He defined a learned society as one which publishes a journal and holds an annual meeting;"

I bet you all pronounced learned as /ˈlɜːnd/ before the stumble! (I did and I copied it ) Of course it is /ˈlɜːnɪd/ So no need for learnéd, which then runs against supporting cliché and résumé. I notice instances of fiancé(e) becoming fiance(e)* without people resurrecting the pronunciation /ˌfiɑnˈs/ of the obsolete word fiance. 

*e.g. 
http://www.ehow.com/info_12147865_10-things-girl-should-her-fiance-before-marriage.html (AE) 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...eats-anorexia-fiance-orders-PUT-ON-stone.html (BE)


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## Wordsmyth

Myridon said:


> _[...] _It took me 5 minutes to do "bèars beàr". _[...]_


 "bèars beàr" : 3 seconds (Alt138, Alt133) ... And I like the cranberry analogy: because the cranberry doesn't change its skin to try and look like a raisin: it stays a cranberry! 

Ws


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## lucas-sp

Is it true that English has "no indigenous traditions of diacritics"? 

I can think of one example which will doubtless piss people off but which seems worth dropping in here anyway. It's _The New Yorker_'s longstanding tradition of using tremas - *¨*- to signify dieresis. The most famous example of this is their constant drive to write *coöperation* (co-operation), which is an authentically and autochtonous English/American usage (since the French word from which "cooperate" is derived itself does not employ a trema).

In this case, a community of English speakers has not only employed a diacritical mark with surprising consistency, but has generalized and developed their own specifically English-language rules for the use of that diacritic.

I only bring this up because it seems to trouble the basic assumptions of some of the arguments on both the new and old threads - i.e. that English speakers are completely alien to diacritical marks. If, in fact, we think about diacritical marks differently, some of the various morally-inflected arguments ("Let _them_ learn!" in which "them" refers either to "dumb English-speakers" or "resistant non-English-speakers") might have to change.

It's clear that diacritics are of great help, for instance, in high-school Shakespeare classes, where the print text "Romeo is banished!" is not nearly as helpful to the beginning student as "Romeo is banishéd!" Even the hyphen in the older spelling of "co-operation" is a form of diacritical mark. And I think it would be greatly impolite to leave off the diacritical marks on proper names when discussing an author's work. As such, I find it really difficult to accept that English speakers have no concept of diacritics, when they're in fact in use in so many purely English situations - similarly, don't non-English speakers have some experience of non-diacritics (the French practice of dropping accents from uppercase letters, for instance, applies here)? 

Whatever arguments are made on this thread, I think it would be nice to build them from a place that does not exclusively identify English with "a lack of diacritics" and foreign languages with "the use of diacritics."


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## Wordsmyth

I'm heartily with you on all your points, lucas-sp. 

In fact, my "Let them learn" (though I admit it sounds a little Marie-Antoinette-influenced) wasn't aimed at the whole English speaking population, nor even the 'dumb' or resistant, but simply at those whom others felt would be perturbed by the sight of diacritics — and behind my comment was the conviction that indeed they wouldn't be traumatised. 





lucas-sp said:


> _[...]_ don't non-English speakers have some experience of non-diacritics (the French practice of dropping accents from uppercase letters, for instance, applies here)? _[...]_


  Well, they do, limitedly, because of the shortcomings of pre-computer era typewriters and typesetting keyboards. But that's no longer relevant, and the Académie française is seriously discouraging the 'non-diacritic' practice. Before anyone's tempted to think I'm going off-topic, I mention that only to support (as does the said Académie) the principle that diacritics are an intrinsic and essential part of the identity of a word, whether it appears in text of the same language or in an English text.

Ws


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## lucas-sp

Sure, I know about the new rule that allows me to write all the À's and É's I like.

But another factor in the non-use of diacritics by languages that employ diacritics is advertising and graphic design - isn't it true that in many posters, film trailers, etc. language is graphically stylized to the point that several of its common features, including diacritics, can be removed? (I believe that complex Chinese and Japanese characters can be massively simplified for graphic purposes as well, although please correct me if I'm wrong there.) And in these situations, speakers have no problem distinguishing what the words "ought to have been." For instance, in French I commonly see advertising posters that replace the slanted accents (`and ´) with a single up-and-down line for both. It's still easy enough to read the signs when the diacritic doesn't actually do its job.

In that way, again, I think we can assume that even die-hard diacritics dedicatees would be aware of the fact that in certain situations diacritics are suppressed or transformed. The same way, in fact, that spelling can be transformed (Krazy Kat), or hard-and-fast rules of grammar, or words (Econolodge)...

Perhaps my rule is "preserve the original diacritical marks, unless you have a good reason not to do so (or at least _a _reason)." I'd obviously prefer if that rule didn't hinge upon a linguistic chauvinism, but better that than just arbitrary Jóse'ing.


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## PaulQ

Myridon said:


> So now we must learn the orthography of every language in advance just in case someone should borrow a word from that language. I suppose this goes for Cyrillic, katakana, kanji, etc. Someone might just start borrowing those words as well.


There might be a bit of the strawman about this argument but, essentially, it is so. Who spells smörgåsbord with diacritics? It is smorgasbord, and pronounced accordingly.



Wordsmyth said:


> ...the Académie française is seriously discouraging the 'non-diacritic' practice.


The Académie française is probably the final conservative word in linguistic chauvinism. I feel that were there an Engish equivalent, every diacritic would be stripped away and cast at the feet of the offending word. 



lucas-sp said:


> Perhaps my rule is "preserve the original diacritical marks, unless you have a good reason not to do so (or at least a reason)." I'd obviously prefer if that rule didn't hinge upon a linguistic chauvinism, but better that than just arbitrary Jóse'ing.


I have difficulty treating words as loan-words. They are either English or they are not. If you look upon them as adopted children, then it would be wrong to mark them out every time you mention one; they should surely be full members of the family with all rights and duties attaching thereto. 

You argument on cooperate was well-taken but after a while of seeing it as such, the pronunciation does not become a difficulty. Were it a case of help for pronunciation, then diacritics would have to be applied to one or both *presents *in, "He presents the presents"

As a further point, we do not pronounce the words with diacritics as would a native speaker of the language from which we took them, so what purpose do they serve? An approximation of another language?


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## Wordsmyth

PaulQ said:


> _[...] _As a further point, we do not pronounce the words with diacritics as would a native speaker of the language from which we took them, so what purpose do they serve? An approximation of another language?



The original posts (of both threads that were merged to make this one) were about names of places and people. Different nationalities seem to have different philosophies about pronouncing foreign names. In one country that I know well, TV newsreaders tend to assassinate foreign names by reading them as if they were words in their own language — not through ignorance, but because of a philosophy that it's normal to do so. In another country that I know well, newsreaders usually make the effort to pronounce foreign names approximately correctly (which seems to me, I guess because of my cultural background, to be a little more respectful and certainly more informative).  In the latter case, I'm sure that the diacritics are a great help, and so do serve a purpose.

Ws


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## berndf

PaulQ said:


> There might be a bit of the strawman about this argument but, essentially, it is so. Who spells smörgåsbord with diacritics? It is smorgasbord, and pronounced accordingly.


It might depend on how firmly a foreign name has been assimilated. I don't think any Englishman would write the name of the composer _Händel_ rather than _Handel_ or write _München_ for the city of_ Munich_. while less well known names have a higher chance of being represented in the original spelling, e.g. _Düsseldorf_ rather _Dusseldorf_. (See e.g. the English  Wikipedia articles Handel, Munich but Düsseldorf).


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## mplsray

berndf said:


> It might depend on how firmly a foreign name has been assimilated. I don't think any Englishman would write the name of the composer _Händel_ rather than _Handel_ or write _München_ for the city of_ Munich_. while less well known names have a higher chance of being represented in the original spelling, e.g. _Düsseldorf_ rather _Dusseldorf_. (See e.g. the English  Wikipedia articles Handel, Munich but Düsseldorf).



Equally evident in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary's entries Handel, Munich, and Düsseldorf, just to give a more traditional source.


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## Wordsmyth

berndf's and mplsray's posts raise another thought in my mind. Perhaps a change in mentality is occurring gradually, and the world of language is becoming less parochial. Perhaps, in times past, diacritics were considered alien to English (aside from lucas-sp's examples in post #66), so names that were assimilated, or at least became well-known, were stripped of their diacritics (Handel) and/or were respelt (Munich), and have stayed that way. 

Perhaps names that have become known more recently have retained their diacritics because of an increasing tendency to respect original forms (as I said in post #60, the international communication barriers are down). It would be interesting to see whether the Merriam-Webster still has Düsseldorf's umlaut in 50 or 100 years from now : I think there's a fair chance.

Another example (going back to Jacobtm's question in post #44) : Merriam-Webster gives M*e*xico (no accent), but Bogot*á*.

Ws


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## PaulQ

Wordsmyth said:


> Perhaps a change in mentality is occurring gradually, and the world of language is becoming less parochial.


Were it so... "A-level results: number of languages students falls to new low" and "In the United States, only 9% of Americans speak both their native language and another language fluently."

Use of diacritics would be dependent to some extent on knowing they exist.


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## stormwreath

berndf said:


> It might depend on how firmly a foreign name has been assimilated. I don't think any Englishman would write the name of the composer _Händel_ rather than _Handel_ or write _München_ for the city of_ Munich_. while less well known names have a higher chance of being represented in the original spelling, e.g. _Düsseldorf_ rather _Dusseldorf_. (See e.g. the English  Wikipedia articles Handel, Munich but Düsseldorf).


There's another issue here. The German language has a specific rule for writing words without an umlaut: you use an 'e' instead. So the correct spelling is either Düsseldorf or Duesseldorf; the second version specially catering for people who can't or won't use an umlaut. But to me, the second one is aesthetically unappealing,... so I took the trouble to learn that ALT+0252 is the code for 'ü', and spell it in the German fashion. It just seems more respectful that way. Dusseldorf is just plain wrong, though.

Though I do confess to being a little hypocritical when it comes to less-familiar languages and diacritics. I'll talk about Köln or Liège, but I'd generally write Lodz instead of Łódź, because Polish scares me.  I also make an exception for some words which have been thoroughly assimilated into English by past generations - Prussia instead of Preussen, for example - but even then I'd say 'Helsinki' and 'Livorno' not 'Helsingfors' and 'Leghorn', so I'm not entirely consistent.


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## Wordsmyth

If you want to save yourself one keystroke, stormwreath, Alt+129 is also *ü* (and Alt+154 is *Ü*)

Ws


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## JulianStuart

PaulQ said:


> Were it so... "A-level results: number of languages students falls to new low" and "In the United States, only 9% of Americans speak both their native language and another language fluently."
> 
> Use of diacritics would be dependent to some extent on knowing they exist.



My first thought when seeing the discussion here was "This is a parallel discussion to the one about pronunciation of foreign words".  I think the same issues will influence the written form and the spoken form - based on familiarity, or lack thereof, with foreign sounds and symbols.  Some will care and know about (some of) them while others will pay no attention to either   Those who care, and therefore write and pronounce the words as they came from the loan language, will be "correct" in the sense that they got them "right" when they borrowed them, but it's likely that they will be in a (small) minority when it comes to counting usage frequencies - another measure of "correctness" (at least in the long run).


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## airportzombie

Jacobtm said:


> My spellcheck doesn't like "Bogota," preferring that I write "Bogotá". In Spanish, "Bogotá" is of course the correct spelling, but I'm writing in English. I wouldn't write "México" in English, even though that is the correct spelling of the country's name in Spanish.
> 
> This issue goes to a general confusion I have with including foreign diacritics in English. Any guidance on this issue?



My advice is the following, in order of preference:
Refer to the style guide of the institution you are studying at or of your place of work. If an umlaut makes the difference between getting an A+ or getting paid, then toe the line.
Refer to a dictionary or other reference material. Let the editors agonize over whether to keep diacritics rather than you losing sleep over this.
Use your own judgment. You know what you know, and you know who your audience is; context is everything.
Use your personal preference. Go nuts and let the tildes roll!
Technological limitations; if you don't have it, you can't use it.
I would tend to use the diacritics of foreign proper nouns in English, unless items 1 or 2 above came into play.


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