debka_notion: (Default)
debka_notion ([personal profile] debka_notion) wrote2010-02-03 08:14 am

Obscure Or Obvious?

Do you know what a doppelganger is? More accurately, how troubled should I be that many of my rabbinical school classmates a. don't know what a doppelganger is, and b. try to spell it as two words?

Just a thought from the insane place in my mind that is me trying to avoid exams...

[identity profile] shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com 2010-02-03 10:39 pm (UTC)(link)
English does have diacriticals for fully absorbed words, and with reason. The words resume and résumé, for example, are pronounced differently and have completely different meanings.

There's also a convention, mostly disused today (though The New Yorker still employs it) of writing diaereses to avoid compound vowel confusions. To boot: coöperateinstead of cooperate, since the latter looks as if it ought to be pronounced KOO-pə-rate.

[identity profile] margavriel.livejournal.com 2010-02-03 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
And yet "resume" is still an acceptable English spelling for "résumé" (though I would always use the accented form).