How 5 letters might disappear forever :(

[Muirium]

But someone dropped thorn and ing and the rest, way back.

So if "gifu" means "gift", then Aelfgifu (the wife of Aethelred the Unready) meant "gift from the elves"?

I suspect so. Of course, it all sounds Lord of the Rings to me!

Tolkien knew his way around runes, I'm sure. Middle Earth is England in the Middle Ages. And the dwarves are, of course, the Scots! I did love Billy Connolly in the most recent Hobbit film. Not least his choice of stallion and where it wore its armour!

[photekq]

Aelfgifu was a real person, not a LotR character

[Muirium]

Yeah, but I won't let something like that stop me from posting the War Hog!

[seebart]

Aelfgifu was a real person, not a LotR character

Maybe the War Hog was real too.

[webwit]

She was a cnut.

[Muirium]

Pretty much a given when you're royalty.

[webwit]

No I mean she really, really was a cnut.

[elecplus]

No I mean she really, really was a cnut.

Except that one was not the wife of Aethelred the Unready, since she was born abt 968 and died in 1002, after which Aethelred married Emma, Queen of England, daughter of Richard I and Emma, Duchess of Normandy. Emma who married Aethelred also married Cnut, and had children by both marriages.

[kbdfr]

[…] If it weren't for the 9 time zones between us, this would be right about the time of day for Kbdfr to lecture to the contrary. I disagree completely, but i must give the man credit. He's quite consistent in his advocacy for a dedicated physical key for everything!

Perhaps later.
In the meantime I'll just say, to put it mildly, that your arguments have nothing to do with what the discussion is about: linguistics.

[Muirium]

Quite true.

I understand that Ü and Ç and the like are very frequently used in their corresponding languages. And so having dedicated keys for them makes at least as much sense as for less used Latin letters like Q and Z. But that doesn't mean I have to like it! Diacritics are a hack. An ancient one, sure, but a quick and dirty hack to extend the Latin alphabet without really extending the Latin alphabet. I'd have more respect for those oddballs if they looked as distinct as, say, Katakana legends do.

[Parjánya]

What is the linguistic argument in this? Perhaps minimal pairs, the phonological inventory of each language and the graphemes for each phoneme? I'm not sure how would it be, since what we have, I think, is more of a historical problem than anything else.

We inherited this alphabet, with some posterior additions, that was suited just for Latin really; later, different people adapted it differently for the phonemes in their vernaculars (as <ą> for /ã/ in Lithuanian, but <ã> in Portuguese, for instance). So we mostly got diacritics that way. Now, how to fit this in our originally-American-minded keyboards is just a matter of compromise... isn't it?

[Laser]

I'll chime in. The 'evolution' of Romanian language treatment in Windows OS is discussed at length here: http://secarica.ro/.

Personally I would have nothing to do with a keyboard using Romanian diacritics in place of [,] etc.(especially since they use cedilla, but also because ...) Nowadays, a very popular Romanian layout, available in Windows *and* Linux, is the so called 'programmers layout', in which ă, î, ț, ș, â are composed using a, i, t, s, q + AltGr, while everything else is US compatible. Since I don't have to switch between US and RO layouts anymore, I find this layout to be a perfect one. Unfortunately, I think a lot of water will pass from Danube to the Black Sea until I will see a keyset showing these diacritics, correctly, near the above letters.

[7bit]

...
... for some you can hack a combo like oe for ö in German but it's something bastardized

Someone called me a bastard?


But seriously, I don't want to take anybodys ö, ñ, ł, ż, ç, etc. away, I was only joking.

Maybe, one day there will be traditional ®ô₥äñìæņ layout available in Round 7.

[DanielT]

I'll chime in. The 'evolution' of Romanian language treatment in Windows OS is discussed at length here: http://secarica.ro/.

Personally I would have nothing to do with a keyboard using Romanian diacritics in place of [,] etc.(especially since they use cedilla, but also because ...) Nowadays, a very popular Romanian layout, available in Windows *and* Linux, is the so called 'programmers layout', in which ă, î, ț, ș, â are composed using a, i, t, s, q + AltGr, while everything else is US compatible. Since I don't have to switch between US and RO layouts anymore, I find this layout to be a perfect one. Unfortunately, I think a lot of water will pass from Danube to the Black Sea until I will see a keyset showing these diacritics, correctly, near the above letters.

I'm using the same layout, it's perfect for my needs and easy to remember where everything is.

@7bit: if some day in Round7 you will make those caps I will buy a handfull even if they are SA
What I meant with ö and oe is that the same trick works is Romanian for ț using tz and ș using sh, the kids do that and it's horrible but for the other 3 letters you have no way of doing it because of the way they sound.

[Muirium]

the same trick works is Romanian for ț using tz and ș using sh, the kids do that and it's horrible

Sounds like evolution to me. If those kids are still doing it in a few decades from now, that's standard Romanian and the extra letters will be the historical footnote that only scholars and heavy metal bands use!

Fortunately, this was not the case when t3h k1dz 1nn0vat3d for a while when texting in English. Those spellings hit the trashcan along with their obsolete Nokia phones!

[SL89]

If anything, some languages could make better use of things like the thorn and ampersand and whatnot, less keystrokes in general. I know the Queen's English is slowly being eroded but maybe its time for txtspk 2 take ovr.

[Muirium]

1999 called. Th3y w£n) lxZ&r zq@(('re ;-;8& back.

We all know the next fad already. Emoji!

[DanielT]

the same trick works is Romanian for ț using tz and ș using sh, the kids do that and it's horrible

Sounds like evolution to me. If those kids are still doing it in a few decades from now, that's standard Romanian and the extra letters will be the historical footnote that only scholars and heavy metal bands use!

Fortunately, this was not the case when t3h k1dz 1nn0vat3d for a while when texting in English. Those spellings hit the trashcan along with their obsolete Nokia phones!

You don't hang around other forums, check GH or Post(redd)it those spellings are still alive m8 Proper language it's on the way to the dumpster. Sometimes I read the forums with the slang dictionary page open because I don't understand half of the words I must be old ...

[Muirium]

I have an internal filter that makes random text spewing morons invisible to me. It's called prejudice. Highly recommended!

[Laser]

Well, we could invent the 21st century keyboard - with 2 (or 3) extra columns to account for international letters, right before the right shift, enter, \| column.

[7bit]

First attempt:

Round7_RO-layout_001.png (25.76 KiB) Viewed 3940 times

I'm unsure about the position of  if there is no 1.5 units key.

What about a row 3 Â (where that extra key is on ISO-layouts)?

Also: I think the commas should be smaller.

[DanielT]

Been away for a while and missed this So cool to see those legends. I'll make a small description of the current layouts because there are 2 or 3 of them

[ohaimark]

... that's standard Romanian and the extra letters will be the historical footnote that only scholars and heavy metal bands use!

Proving that Metal band members are secretly academes. They also love cats, almost as a rule.