On Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:39:08 -0400, Earl M. Herrick <eherrick@...>
wrote:

[...]

> the English speakers figure that "those little fly-specks don't really
> count", and don't drill their student on writing them. [...]

You clearly remind me of how passionately-monolingual US Anglophones like
to decorate their text at times. Jason cosmetics had their decorative
diuacritics wrong at first, iirc, and changed them to fit the
pronunciation.

Story goes that when the rock band Mötley Crüe first appeared in Germany,
at the opening of the show, they were greeted by (presumably friendly)
chanting in the audience of the German pronunciation (although I find
"Crüe" to be really awkward). I don't know what the band's reaction was.
One shudders to think what some name-decorators would do with Vietnamese
diacritics! (Is "diacritics" the correct term?)

Regards,

--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass. (Not "MA")
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
Hope for these times: Paul Rogat Loeb's book --
"The Impossible Will Take a Little While:..."