Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Friday, October 19, 2007

How Come #1: How Come There's No Umlaut in Umlaut?

Sorry, yes, I know I already included that exact observation/question in the previous post, but it kind of deserves to be split out on it's own, don't you think? It's a puzzler!

How come there's no umlaut in umlaut? Isn't that hypocrisy, on some level? And if not hypocrisy, certainly it's a missed opportunity on the part of whoever markets typography to the masses! It ought to be on there. I don't care if it does change the pronunciation. People will adjust. Put it on there.

This post inaugurates my soon-to-be-burgeoning "How Come" series, wherein I wonder about things like...this, for instance. Things that people really ought to be more on top of. Or other things too, of course! I don't want to define my horizons too narrowly on my inaugural "How Come" post! Otherwise, people would be like, how come he did that? Hemmed himself in. Poor move.

2 comments:

Edana said...

The pronunciation here probably wouldn't change all that much, from what I remember from my German club ages ago. We pronounce Umlaut like oom-lout, but I think it's technically more like um-lout. Adding an umlaut would make it technically oom-lout. It would be more correct! At least the way we say it. Germans would probably get annoyed.

dogimo said...

Damn.

This makes me believe my point even more strongly!!

How come "palindrome" isn't a palindrome? Couldn't they have just picked a better word for it, that was?