Ar 15:12 -0800 1999-12-03, scr�obh Tony Harminc:
>This brings up the point that not all occurrences of foreign words or
>phrases in a document are in that foreign language. English, most
>notably, borrows without shame, and I think that phrases like "au
>fait" or "a propos" found in an English document can fairly be said
>to be in English rather than French. Certainly many such are listed
>in English dictionaries, and most English users will not use accented
>letters where the French would require them. They are also used as
>part of English grammatical constructs, (e.g. I might say "a propos
>of such and such...") rather than as quoted foreign text.
The correct spelling of this naturalized English word is "apropos"; I
checked because I would assume that, naturalized or not, if it were "a
propos" it should be "� propos". In fact I would have spelled it that way,
and was surprised to find that I was wrong... :-)
The rules (for English) are that naturalized words (like "fa�ade" and
"apr�s-ski") are written in plain type (accent stripping is not the rule)
but that foreign words (like "auberge" and "berceuse") are written in
italics. Apropos the subject line, I have no idea whether anyone would
think to build such foreign terms into spelling/grammar checkers but I
suppose in 500 years it will be commonplace....
Michael Everson * Everson Gunn Teoranta * http://www.indigo.ie/egt
15 Port Chaeimhghein �ochtarach; Baile �tha Cliath 2; �ire/Ireland
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