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A comment on New ancient ape from Türkiye challenges the story of human origins. Parent comment

Re:New ancient ape from Türkiye challenges the story of huma... by lovich on Thursday August 24, 2023 @11:26AM (#37249936)
It’s used to signal when you have a pair of the same letters but the second has a different pronunciation.

So “deer” has two e’s but no umlaut because they make the same sound but “coördinate” has the umlaut since the second o is a new sound.

I personally like them and wish they would come back if only as a small push back against the horrific ambiguity that is the English language

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Re:New ancient ape from Türkiye challenges the story of huma... by meepmorp on Thursday August 24, 2023 @06:54PM (#37255599)
> It’s used to signal when you have a pair of the same letters but the second has a different pronunciation.

That's a somewhat naïve take.

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Re:New ancient ape from Türkiye challenges the story of huma... by simiones on Friday August 25, 2023 @08:39AM (#37261036)
As far as I understand, it's actually used to indicate a hiatus instead of a diphtong. E.g. naïvety is meant to indicate that aï are part of different syllables and shouldn't be pronounced in the same syllable, just like the oö in coördinate.
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