Tilde (was: Re: Number of writing systems)

Agustín Barahona <barahona at egiptologia dot net> wrote:

>> In English the word "tilde" refers only to the curly line used as a
>> diacritic.
>
> Thank you for your kind remark, however, those weren't my news. I
> thought that also in English the term _tilde_ is used to denote both
> sign for accents and sign for the swung dash over the "ñ". At least
> it's included that way in the Oxford Superlex Dictionary 1.1 (B316).
> Please, would be anybody so kind as to corroborate this matter? Thank
> you in advance.

For my part, I had never before heard the word "tilde" used to describe
any type of diacritical mark other than the small raised swung-dash
("tilde virgulilla"). I understand now that this usage exists in
Spanish.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/