I was about to Have Opinions about the threats the US is making to Greenland, Denmark and Europe, then realised I have nothing useful to add, so I pressed Delete.

@shivers @CiaraNi I never knew that.

@wannabemystiker I know, right? When Mette Frederiksen is finished with Trump, we'll ask her to get on to fixing this next.

@tanghus @wannabemystiker That's a very interesting article. Thanks for sharing it. I've bookmarked for a deeper read later.

This pleased me to read:

"Men det er ikke danskerne syd for stødgrænsen der udtaler ordene underligt. Faktisk er det underligt at danskerne nord for stødgrænsen overhovedet begyndte at ’støde’.

@BooksandJohn We should really do something about that

@CiaraNi Maybe you could say in a Northern Irish accent and call it an an umlaüt? That's the only way I can see to put one in without mangling the sound of the word.

@tanghus @hanscees Ha - it does actually have a kind of sexy aura in Anaïs. I waver between thinking the New Yorker is being pretentious and thinking the New Yorker is keeping good linguistic traditions alive, depending on how good a lunch I had on the given day I'm thinking about it.

@log That'd do

@timtfj Ah sure let's put at least two of them in there while we're at it. There are three vowels, so that'd still be quite restrained.

@CiaraNi @hanscees

@CiaraNi maybe it's like how you're not suppose to use a word as part of the definition for that word.

@bracken I had to think about that for a second. I think you're right.

@CiaraNi @walfischbucht It seems Estonian has got it right with their word ‘täpid’ for ‘umlaut’. And Finnish has a word ‘ääkönen’ meaning ‘any Finnish letter with an umlaut’, and it's really just the word for letter (‘aakonen’) with umlauts sprinkled on it.

(according to Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/umlaut#English, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%A4%C3%A4kk%C3%B6nen#Finnish)

@headword @walfischbucht 'Täpid’ - that's more like it. I'm going to need Germans to speak Estonian from now on, so, please.

Also, thanks for this information. Very pleasing to learn.

@headword @CiaraNi @walfischbucht
Aakonen: Regular letter.
Ääkönen: Fäncÿ lëttër.

@Mabande Nice @headword @walfischbucht

@CiaraNi

There should be!

I love saying the word 'umlaut'

@CiaraNi

@CiaraNi
I might add:

The word Mühlenbrücke (mill bridge) is also an interesting case of two silent letters in the German language, one making the preceding vowel long (h) and one that makes it short (c). In other terms: Those two ü's aren't even pronounced the same way.

@CiaraNi well, you can always create the diminutive with -chen, tweaking it to contain an umlaut:

Umläutchen

@CiaraNi
Omlyd, direkte oversat