Marco Cimarosti écrivit (!):
>
> The second point regarding French is that, AFAIK, these abbreviations are
> also written with normal (non superscript) letters, as you have written them
> in your mail.
That is true. It is as true as the fact that when we French are to write
the oe digraph, we *type* it as two separate letters, for lack of better
solutions.
And no, outside computers, this form is not used. When I, or anyone else,
*write* them (for example in dates), we use the superscript form.
> So my question is: is the superscript attribute essential in French to
> understand these abbreviations (as it is in Italian), or is it desirable but
> optional (as it is in English)?
I am sure the situation in Italian is the same as for French: superscripts
forms are preferred, but for lack of better solutions, baseline letters
are understood (but surely it is annoying).
> > Also, a large number of people (incorrectly) believe the form
> > for second, third etc. is "2ème" rather than "2e" (in fact, if you
> > look at examples in France, you will find about 75% of 2ème versus
> > 25% of 2e...). This begs for additional "m" and "è" (U+00E0).
>
> I think I have seen 2nd, 3rd etc. written as "2me", "3me" etc.
True, but it is rarer (and perhaps rarer these days than 2e 3e, since
correct typography is spreading, thanks to computers and education
of a number of people, including journalists!)
You could also encounter 2ième, 3ièmes, etc. This is probably even
more common than 2me, by the way.
> If this is true, and if your answer at the question above was "yes", this
> could start to look like a pattern: languages (such as English) which
> abbreviate ordinals writing 2 or more final letters can do without the
> superscript attribute; on the other hand languages (such as Italian) which
> only use the last final letter need the superscript attribute.
Ah! But when I said yes about "2me", I was implying the superscript form.
I am not sure I ever saw 2me written like this, on a single baseline
(OTOH, something like 2ième, or even 2-ième, is more often in baseline
form than in superscript form).
> As I said above for French. The whole Catalan set is missing (apart the
> casual "n", not in Latin 1), so does it make sense to add it?
Outside computers, I never saw it written with the letter on the baseline.
One primary reason is the influence of Spanish here, which do have
the superscript form (and Catalans, even if they will refuse to tell you
so, do borrow a lot of habits from Castillians).
> It is less likely that someone got used to write only "2n" and, suddenly,
> finds herself at odds when having to write "1r" or "4t".
Correct. In fact, while U+207F is available on standard PCs (codepage 437),
I never saw it used for "segon".
Antoine
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Jul 06 2001 - 00:17:18 EDT