>The accents in (American) English words are learned haphazardly
>later -- and are actively manipulated by advertisers for effects that
>have nothing to do with lexicographic correctness.
Foreign language teachers call this "random umlaut disease" when the
results of this haphazard approach by their freshmen students shows up in
German class.
Off-off topic, it's an interesting observation to note that ie - ei
confusion (you are as often served a Weiner as a Wiener in the US) is a
nice example of how spelling distinctions can go away if the cues
(different pronunciation) are no longer there.
To get us back we started from: Absent universal support in spell-checkers,
the chances of the distinction betwen 02BC and 2019 surviving for long I
would regard as very small, given the examples we have discussed.
A./
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