Re: [OT] o-circumflex

From: Lars Marius Garshol (larsga@garshol.priv.no)
Date: Mon Sep 10 2001 - 17:04:54 EDT


* Marco Cimarosti
|
| One of these cases could be the word "dataarkiv", which I found in a Danish
| web page
| (http://www.riksarkivet.no/nordiskarknytt/98-nr4/institusjonen.html).

Uh, no, you found it in a Norwegian web page. The word is the same in
Danish, though.
 
| Order B:
| 1. data
| 2. dataarkiv
| 3. Datben, Dr. Keld
| 4. Datz, Mr. Marco
| 5. Datåz, Dr. Asmus
|
| Asmus was arguing that List B would be the correct one (and this is
| certainly true on, e.g., a dictionary) but, in order to obtain it, the
| source text must be properly encoded with invisible separators inserted
| where needed.

Not necessarily. One solution I've seen automatically generated sort
keys from the headwords, but allowed users to adjust them where
necessary. I think users are likely to favour this solution if given a
choice.

Of course, it depends on how important it is to get the sorting
right, and what importance the headwords have within the system
whether this solution is feasible or not. In a phone directory I guess
nobody would use it.
 
| And this is precisely what I was trying to say, although I was not
| necessarily talking about multilingual sort ("dataarkiv" seems a purely
| Danish word, although derived from Latin roots).

It's a simple concatenation of the words for 'computing' (data) and
'archive' (arkiv), meaning any electronic archive.

This kind of construction is very common in Norwegian and Danish,
leading speakers to invent all kinds of strange new words when writing
English[1], and the Swedes to joke that we call bananas 'yellowbends'.
 
--Lars M.

[1] And, conversely, after learning English, to split apart words that
    God meant us to write without spaces in them. It really ann oys to
    see people write in that incon venient way.



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