[openbeos] Re: AW: Re: AW: Locale Kit

> > From: "Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > RR? Are are you sure? :-)
> > You forgot about "ch" though which is sorted as one letter and follows
> > "c" :)

Doh!  Not surprising considering that I rarely use my spanish and haven't had 
any classes in 7.5 years.


>
> It may interest you to know that not all authorities (or at least not all
> textbooks) agree on which letters make up the alphabet. Some lists don't
> include W (sometimes referred to as doble ve) and K, which exist almost
> exclusively in words of foreign origin, such as kilowatt. And some lists
> count RR (erre), whose sound usually is different than that of R, as a
> separate letter [although the Academy does not count it as such].
>
> The Academy also has ruled that while CH and LL are considered letters, for
> alphabetization purposes only they should not be treated that way. It used
> to be that dictionaries would list all the words beginning with CH
> separately, after the words beginning with C, so, for example, the word
> achatar would be listed after acordar. But in most modern dictionaries, the
> words are alphabetized as they would be in English (except that the Ñ comes
> after the N).

Well, that is just ducky.  They can't seem to agree on stuff.  My dictionary 
counts "RR" as a single letter and doesn't include W.  It also goes against 
the academy in terms of sorting, so even if I could think of an example to 
demonstrate the accent sorting, I wouldn't be able to trust the information 
(hmm... maybe I could look it up and then do the opposite).

>
> <snip>
>
> You will find as you learn Spanish that vowels are often written with
> accents, as in tablón, and the U is sometimes topped with a dieresis or
> umlaut, as in vergüenza. However, vowels with such diacritical marks are
> not considered separate letters as they can be in some other languages.
>
> </quote>

They never mentioned the umlaut in school, but I did find vergüenza in my 
dictionary.  Interestingly enough, it means shame and the plural of the word 
can mean genitals.  I would have expected it to be a more imported word.

>
> Source:
> http://spanish.about.com/library/beginning/bl-beg-intro-alphabet.htm
>
> The same page has a link on typing diacritical marks in Spanish, including
> "ñ" (for Gabe). :-)

The link isn't any good for me since it only mentions windows and mac (I don't 
have access to a mac, and I only use windows when I can't avoid it).  I did 
manage to find a character selection program for KDE.

>
> But this still doesn't answer Axel's question about relative sort positions
> of accented and unaccented vowels in Spanish, unfortunately.

I think I might know somebody with the answer to the question.  I'll let you 
guys know if I find out anything.

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