Topic 4. Transcription

[Stephen Tabor]

At 08:47 AM 1/21/99 -0700, Bob Maxwell wrote:
>I don't know about Scandinavian languages, but I was a French major as an
>undergraduate and I am not aware that "oe" is considered a separate letter
>(which might be one argument for this, since we do attempt to transcribe
>actual separate letters such as thorn or the Polish L). I suggest some
>research into this and if there is no good reason for keeping the oe and ae
>ligatures in these particular cases that aspect of the rule, at least, be
>dropped.

The question is not what is conventional within the language, but what the
item says and how it says it. If an eccentric early English printer spelled
"vvhatsoeuer" on the title page using a digraph "oe", we should transcribe
it as digraph "oe".


Steve Tabor