User:Doremítzwr/Why opt for diæretic spellings
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This essay exists to explain and justify the use of diæretic spellings in place of fused or hyphenated forms; it is neither a policy nor a guideline. |
¨, the diæresis, is used to indicate the division of two adjacent vowels as two syllables rather than as a diphthong. In English, it is most commonly seen in the French borrowing naïve, in which it indicates that the word is properly pronounced IPA: [næˈiːv], and not IPA: [neɪv]. However, it can also be used in other words, for example: reëmerge, multiïnstrumentalist and coöpt.
[edit] Quoted rationale for opting for coöperate in place of co-operate and cooperate
See here for the original context.
“The reason for not using “cooperate” is fairly obvious; the typical pronunciation for ‘oo’ is /uː/, which leads some people to stumble over this word, as it is correctly pronounced /koʊˈɒ.pə.ɹeɪt/, and not /ˈkuː.pə.ɹeɪt/ — English is difficult enough to spell already without adding yet another exception.
Hyphens, I believe, are best done away with as soon as possible in single words, being most useful in making compound neologisms more readable. However, “co-operate” is certainly not a neologism, and is familiar to most people fluent in English; therefore, retaining the hyphen is unnecessary (except for the pronunciatory reason given above). Hyphenated single words, in my opinion, look awkward, and are made even worse when adding another affix; “co-operate” and “co-operative” may seem fine to you, but how about “unco-operative”?
Therefore, the best of both worlds is found in “coöperate”, which looks like a whole word (no problem with “uncoöperative”, for example), whilst avoiding the distracting pronunciation problems (at first, at least) of using a second unaccented ‘o’.”
