Firstly, re your post (number 12), maybe Ann’s changed since I last saw her, but I don’t think she is a German speaker, nor do I believe she is in possession of a German keyboard.

Secondly, what was the point of winning the war if we don’t assert a bit of preference for anglocising words. Did the Battle of Britain ever reach Somerset?

Yes, I am back at work now. Yes, I have more free time on my hands…

I am not from Wiltshire, but Somerset, which is next to Wilts. Wilts is a terrible place though, where 80s hair bands are still beyond the cusp of their ken.

hope this helps you sleep ann ;)

Furthermore, I believe ann stated that the rat was a ’super rat’, correcting her quite correct english with german is something of a slap in the face to our boys who fought for our current way of life and right to kill rats as we find them.

It is the sensible practice of this newspaper not to insert over the names of people or places every conceivable diacritical sign it can find. This rule applies both to conventional accents and devices such as those wiggly Iberian things known as tildes which, minute though they are, have the power to turn some pious and inoffensive canon into a canyon. It was with some consternation, therefore, that I read in G2 on Thursday an account of a rock band called Mötley Crüe. What precisely are the devices, of the kind that are normally identified as diereses or umlauts, positioned over the O of Motley and the U of Crue? Here in the depths of the Wiltshire countryside it is hard to find experts capable of resolving this question. Nor from this distance can I quite gauge the implications for the new chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, whom the Guardian normally describes as Jiri Belohlavek. This Belohlavek, when looked at more closely, is found to sport a series of diacritical-style decorations, and in circles where these distinctions are still considered significant, appears as Ji rí B elohlávek. If the model of Mötley Crüe is followed, and the new chief conductor has to be treated every time he gives a concert to the full works, I guess a clamour might shortly arise in newspaper offices for B elohlávek to be removed and replaced by another conductor with a simpler name. Leonard Slatkin, for instance. There are other possible consequences, too, for the BBC to consider. Might not rejected applicants for the post begin to assume that their chances might have been better had their names been as exotic as Ji rí’s? It used after all to be said that the real name of the conductor Stokowski was Stokes, and that only making himself sound more cosmopolitan won him a place among world conductors. Or were I for instance Paul Daniel, who in Ji rí’s absence is due to take charge of the final night of the proms, I might well suspect that the road to international acclaim might lie in spelling myself something more like Paül Dàñel.

As recently as the following study for the BAVARIAN ARCHIVE FOR SPEECH SIGNALS (University of Munich, Institut of Phonetics Schellingstr. 3/II, 80799 Muenchen, Germany), the use of an /e/ instead of the cumbersome umlauts was advocated.

My final point is that it was still down to regional preference (I think the country that kick started the printing press over 500 years ago, could cope with an umlaut here and there). Let’s avoid calling regional differences (like non-umlauted vowels, funny accents, and boomerangs) gauche, otherwise we destroy diversity.