In today's surprising news, languages other than English exist.
Might it not be more sensible to add them (if it hasn't already been done) rather than having a competing standard? And what about þ (for our Icelandic friends)?
With the NATO phonetic alphabet, standard usage in Finland is å = alphaalpha, ä = alphaecho, ö = oscarecho. I'm pretty sure this is the same in Sweden. Perhaps other countries have corresponding rules? (The same rules are used when writing Finnish names on international airline tickets, e.g. Rämö becomes Raemoe).
Stuff Iceland. What about yogh for us Scots?
The Punkte in German were originally a small mark above an a, o or u to say that an e followed but that the monk writing the manuscript was saving time and ink by omitting it. The characters can be written ae, oe and ue, and that's common with capitals. However, if you want to describe exactly how a word is spelled and not just convey what it is, you need a way of distinguishing the Punkte version from the -e version.
Interesting fact of the week, I speak some German but never knew the origin. Thanks.
What an extraordinary reply! Whoever would have imagined it!
I entirely agree about the need for standardization.
Because there are uses for language beyond the military.
Not quite - my mother learnt German in the 1930s, and the Nazis had a policy of replacing Greek based words with Germanic equivalents. The example she gave that has stuck is "fernsprecher" in place of "telefonen" - apologies for my bad spelling in German; I never learnt more than enough to order a beer! But almost all words with a Greek or Latin basis were similarly replaced. I don't think many have remained in use.
But what about words with different meanings when spelt with or without accents? They exist!