[Spellyans] dictionnaire de l'Academie francaise

[Michael Everson]

On 2 Feb 2011, at 08:37, David Trethewey wrote:

> For what its worth, my initial reaction to ÿ and ë was negative, I think that having a diacritic that looks very unfamiliar may put people off the language.

Nance used ü in his dictionaries and grammars. The diacritic is not "very unfamiliar"; it has been visible in the Revival for a very long time indeed. 

> My reaction to ô or â or ù to indicate things like irregular vowel length was more positive, perhaps given that these are commonly found in languages such as French and Welsh.

French (and English) both use the diaeresis in words like naïve, and Welsh uses the diaeresis as well (copïo, storïau). 

And why exactly was your reaction "negative"? We've rehearsed the practical and technical reasons for not using ê/ŷ (no point in specifying a diacritic that is unavailable in many fonts). 

It's two little dots. The letter "i" has one dot just like them. The two little dots indicate that these two letters are part of a large class of words with a dialect alternation. 

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/