Re: German 0364 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER E

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Dec 28 2003 - 21:19:52 EST

  • Next message: John Cowan: "Re: German 0364 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER E"

    From: "Stefan Persson" <alsjebegrijptwatikbedoel@yahoo.se>
    > 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.

    Interesting, I am still wondering if there is a justification for the
    rounded
    "e"-shaped form for U+0364 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER E,
    if every occurence I can find always displays a diaeresis or a form
    near from it (such as in Gothik, Fraktur, Sütterlin...) with two tiny
    strokes
    or dots.

    I note that some handwritten forms of a base letter "e" sometimes look like
    a
    yiddish double vav, with the second vav with a shorter leg, above the
    baseline,
    sometimes joined with the first one in a ligature. This looks like an
    intermediary form between the modern rounded "e" and the Sütterlin glyph.



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