From: Stefan Persson (alsjebegrijptwatikbedoel@yahoo.se)
Date: Sun Dec 28 2003 - 20:34:48 EST
Gerd Schumacher wrote:
> Somme additional information
>
> 1. The Umlaut
>
> In German the supralinear e may be used as a variation of the diaeresis
> above a, o, and u. Though it is old fashioned, indeed, it is still
> understandable, and might be used for invitation cards and the like. I don’t know a modern
> font with it, but I got at least one book, in which the supralinear e is
> used. It was published in 1830.
The umlaut:
In old Swedish the umlaut above a, o and u (u only in German names and
similar) was displayed as an "e" above the characters in Fraktur, and
(usually) as two dots above a, o and u in Antiqua (except at the time
when books began to be in Antiqua only, where both variants were used in
both Fraktur and Antiqua).
The diæresis:
In old Swedish the diæresis above y was displayed as two dots in
Fraktur. "ÿ" was at that point used in the same way as "ij", which was
often used for a long "i". The spelling was free, and you could decide
yourself if you wanted to write "ij" or "ÿ" in a particular word. The
diæresis above any letter in Antiqua was generally written as two dots.
In old Swedish loan words and many names were written in Antiqua, while
the rest was written in Fraktur. Thus one should not expect characters
not used in normal Swedish words in Fraktur.
Thus, U+0364 was equivalent to U+0308 when U+0308 was representing an
umlaut, but not when U+0308 was representing a diæresis because U+0308
had two contextually different display forms.
I have not seen the e-above in any Swedish books published after the
19th century.
Stefan
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