Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I get your point, but the fact is these (except maybe for Brontë) commonly get spelled without the diacritics.


That doesn't mean spelling them with the diacritics makes them not English.


French was the official language of England for quite some time so English and French have a special relationship, and any of the French diacritics are acceptable in English. English also has native use of the umlaut mark for as diaeresis e.g. coördinate.

For non-French diacritics, it is on a case-by-case basis. Most English speakers would accept ñ and even write it e.g "El Niño event". Nordic ø is questionable but would be accepted in place names. Phở is right out.


> Most English speakers would accept ñ and even write it e.g "El Niño event"

FWIW this may be true in the USA but in the UK and other non-NA English-speaking countries I don't think this holds.


You will definitely see jalapeños and such on UK food packaging. I just searched the bbc website for "jalapeño" and found this page [0] which uses both spellings (!). It also links to a page on "habañero" (sic) so yeah you can say that British familiarity with Ñ is somewhat of a mixed bag.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/jalapeno_chilli




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: