
How the Å came to be - pyxl
https://medium.com/@frodefrodefrode/put-a-ring-on-it-part-i-18531066c896
======
mc32
Not to take away from Scandinavian orthographic history, but I still can't
forgive the thrifty Caxton for using a "y" to supplant thorn [þ] and eth [ð]in
orthography. I don't care about the aesh, or the transformation of wynn or
yogh, but I wish we didn't have to write a digraph for both the "th" sounds.

~~~
groovy2shoes
Usage of <y> (and <th> for that matter) in place of <þ> predates Caxton's
press. An example of a scribe substituting <y> for <þ> in manuscript can be
seen at [1], a legal document in an English chancery hand from c. 1445. The
use of <th> was already very common in the Middle English period, with <þ> (or
later <y>) retaining use only in sigla (common scribal abbreviations). See
[2], a page of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ from the Ellesmere manuscript (c.
1410) for example.

In fact, many (most?) of the works printed by Caxton himself actually _do_
feature a distinct <þ> glyph, though it is limited in use to sigla (it never
appears without a superscript <e> for <þe>, <t> for <þat>, …). His first
printed English work [3], printed c. 1473 while he was still stationed at
Bruges in what is now Belgium, has a distinct <þ>; his later works printed at
his own press in London do also, such as [4] (which is printed c. 1480 in the
typeface characteristic of his press).

For some related discussion, see [5].

That said, I share your dismay that we no longer have a <þ> (or, honestly, an
<ð> or a <ȝ>, though [ð] and [θ] are allophones and the <gh> once represented
by <ȝ> is now often silent). I just wouldn't be so quick to blame Caxton.

———

[1]:
[http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/examples/chancery6...](http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/examples/chancery6.htm)

[2]:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Ellesmer...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Ellesmere_Manuscript_Knight_Portrait.jpg)

[3]: [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/displayPhoto.pl?path=/service/...](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/displayPhoto.pl?path=/service/rbc/rbc0001/2004/2004rosen1211&topImages=0009r.jpg)

[4]:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Brut_Chr...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Brut_Chronicle.jpg)

[5]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15678583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15678583)

~~~
mc32
Hey awesome information, thanks. I was a while ago I had read about that
theory in some book about old English.

Looks like the custom existed before Caxton but the printing press exacerbated
it and pretty much put an end to the vacillation.

------
vegardx
If only Apple and Google engineers would understand that it's almost
impossible to mistype A and Å on a qwerty-keyboard, it would be awesome.

~~~
m12k
The thing that I miss the most on iOS (don't know if this is the case with
Android as well) is for the OS and apps to just remember which language I last
used when communicating with a given person. Just because I recently wrote a
message to my Danish girlfriend doesn't mean I want the Danish keyboard
instead of the English one when I go to write a message to my Canadian friend.
Seriously, is nobody at Apple bilingual? How they've managed to release 11
versions of iOS and never implemented something as simple and useful as this
is beyond me...

~~~
hultner
Honestly I'd probably be fine with a combined Swedish & English keyboard for
most of my daily interactions (also Swede's in general and in the tech sector
in particular mix in a lot of english).

However being half dane close to the german border and with a interest in
language I do occasionally use other languages as well which results in me
having 6 more active keyboards, and while I mostly toggle between Swedish,
English and some occasional emoji it's quite a hassle to shift though half a
dozen keyboards every other time.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Interested to hear what solution would be better for you. I live in Sweden and
while I don’t speak Swedish everyone I work with basically does as you
describe, the keyboard toggle between English/Swedish keyboards.

Frankly because I work with Danes and Swedes all the time it’s usually enough
to hold down A and O when I need to type å, ö, ø, etc. but I usually don’t
type in those languages. It’s mostly for locations and the occasional
translation.

------
lancebeet
Interesting article. Undoubtedly, some of the earliest uses of the letter were
lost in Tre Kronor, where Sweden kept its national archives until the castle
burned down in the late 17th century.

------
fetbaffe
> Norwegian and Danish aa was finally officially replaced by the Swedish å —
> in 1917 and 1948, respectively.

I guess that explains why both Norwegian and Danish has "å" as the last letter
in the alphabet, whereas in Swedish "å" is the third from the last letter
(name sorting beware!).

Consequently the expression "the Alpha and the Omega" (from the beginning to
the end) is "från A till Ö" in Swedish and "från A till Å" in Norwegian and
Danish(?).

~~~
eesmith
I can see from your posting history that you are Swedish, so know this better
than I, but I went to
[https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_och_Omega](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_och_Omega)
and from what I can make out Sweden uses "A och O", not "från A till Ö".

FWIW,
[https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_og_omega](https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_og_omega)
says it's "A og Å" for Norwegian while
[https://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_og_omega](https://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa_og_omega)
uses "frå A til Å" for Nynorsk. I assume this is like how in English we can
write both (say) "The A to Z of Photography" and "Photography from A to Z".

Perhaps Swedish uses both "A och O" _and_ "från A till Ö"? A DuckDuckGo search
for both phrases supports that conjecture, in that both return plenty of
Swedish pages.

~~~
fetbaffe
Correct, in Swedish you have both, though they differ a bit how you would use
them. I think your English example covers it good.

First we have "från A till Ö", or the older form "från A till O", meaning the
same as in the other languages, like all of it, from beginning to end, like a
register or a list.

The other one, "A och O" is used as you wrote, the example form the Wikipedia
article is good, "Balans är A och O, när man går på lina" roughly "Balance is
key when tightrope walking".

I never heard anyone saying "A och Ö". For me it sounds really silly saying
"Balans är A och Ö, när man går på lina", but apparently some do

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20och%20%C3...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20och%20%C3%B6%22)

However you rarely hear anyone using the older form "från A till O" today.

Norwegian, oh in my first post I spelled it wrong, it should be "fra A til Å"
in bokmål. Sorry for that.

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fra%20a%20til%20...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fra%20a%20til%20%C3%A5)

Spelling is a bit confusing when dealing with svenska, nynorsk, bokmål &
danska at the same time.

Danish and Norweigan seems to use "A og O"

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20og%20o%22](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20og%20o%22)

and "A og Å"

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20og%20%C3%...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20og%20%C3%A5%22)

Edit: sorry for using Google links instead of DuckDuckGo. Got problems with
DDG when searching for "A og Å", got too many false hits, in Norwegian (and
Danish?) you can write "å" instead of "og" for "and". In Swedish you would
write "o" instead of "och".

Edit 2:

Some search results from runeberg.org (Similar as Google Books)

"från A till Ö"
[https://www.google.se/search?q=%22fr%C3%A5n+a+till+%C3%B6%22...](https://www.google.se/search?q=%22fr%C3%A5n+a+till+%C3%B6%22+%2Bsite:runeberg.org)

"från A till O"
[https://www.google.se/search?q=%22fr%C3%A5n+a+till+o%22+%2Bs...](https://www.google.se/search?q=%22fr%C3%A5n+a+till+o%22+%2Bsite:runeberg.org)

"A och O"
[https://www.google.se/search?q=%22a+och+o%22+%2Bsite:runeber...](https://www.google.se/search?q=%22a+och+o%22+%2Bsite:runeberg.org)

"A och Ö" only false hits
[https://www.google.se/search?q=%22a+och+%C3%B6%22+%2Bsite:ru...](https://www.google.se/search?q=%22a+och+%C3%B6%22+%2Bsite:runeberg.org)

Edit 3: Maybe "Balance is everything when tightrope walking" is a better
translation.

~~~
eesmith
Thanks for the clarification!

I think I have a joke.

If "å" means "a river, a creek, a big stream"
([https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%A5#Noun_4](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%A5#Noun_4)
) and "ö" means "island"
([https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%B6#Noun](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%B6#Noun)
) then "Från Å Till Ö" might be a story about someone who paddles a canoe down
a river to camp on one of the river islands.

Or rather, only the last 3/29ths of the story.

~~~
fetbaffe
You should read Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustaf_Fr%C3%B6ding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustaf_Fr%C3%B6ding)

He is considered by some of the greatest poets of all time in Sweden. He
experimented a lot with his language in the poems he wrote, often with
dialects and local expressions.

"Coincidentally" he came from a province called Värmland. Värmland neighbors
with Norway to the west. Dialect of Värmland (värmländska) has a close
relationship with Norwegian.

Swedes find that people from Värmland speaks with happy upbeat at the end of
the sentence (intonation), just like how Swedes hear Norwegians.

Many of the greatest writers & poets in Sweden originate from Värmland.

Anyway, Fröding has a poem called "Dumt fôlk" (Dumb people)

[https://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Dumt_f%C3%B4lk](https://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Dumt_f%C3%B4lk)

He is walking about a Sunday morning and meets an other man that asks for
directions to the vicarage, and one part of the direction uses funny dialect
twist, the man will arrive to a stream where "Å i åa ä e ö" \- and in the
stream there is an island. The man doesn't understand a word of it and leaves.

woman reading the poem
[https://youtu.be/UP_mwiOY7C8](https://youtu.be/UP_mwiOY7C8)

------
teilo
This is excellent. I've run into all these different forms of umlauts in
various old Scandinavian and German manuscripts. I concluded that, yes, they
are indeed just umlauts, so if transcribing in latin Script (for German
anyway), use an umlaut. The grammar made that clear enough.

But I never knew the typographical history as to why there are so many
different forms. So very cool that we can trace the lineage to specific
printers.

------
smcl
Is any Slovak speaker able to comment on the excerpt from the article below?
Equating the Czech "ů" and the Slovak "ô" sounds wrong to me but my experience
with Slovak is very limited.

" As for the letter ů, as used in the Czech Republic, the story is a similar
one to the Swedish. In the sixteenth century, the pronunciation of /uo/
changed to /uː/, prompting a need to reflect this in written Czech.
Reformationists with close ties to Germany brought the Early New High German ů
with them and used it in the influential translation of the Czech Bible
kralická. (The closely related Slovakian language writes the same sound with
an ô after Martin Hattala’s 1852 grammar.) "

~~~
pirkus
ů and ú are pronounced the same in czech /u:/ \- the only difference is
grammar. There are very obscure rules as when to to write ů or ú (wheter it's
in the middle of the word, end of the word, exclamations etc...)

Slovak language also has ú and to my ears it's pronounced the same as in
czech. ô is pronounced /uo/. It might be that the pronunciation has changed in
czech language during hundreds of years. Same is the case of ä in slovak that
used to have different pronunciation to a regular e but after many years
(people being lazy) it is just being pronounced as a regular e.

So if we talk about pronunciation used these days then ů and ô are not
pronounced the same at all.

I'm no historian/linguist. Born in slovakia studied in czech republic

~~~
smcl
Cool - so the ů/ú difference in Czech I was aware of (or at least I roughly
understood it to be related to its position in the word).

But I understand now - the origin is shared, but they're definitely pronounced
differently nowadays.

Thanks!

------
toyg
I’d be curious to see some of the sources for the latter statements about
modern adoption of å in non-northern languages.

I am familiar with the Italian ones mentioned, and afaik they don’t have
official transcription rules, they have always been almost exclusively oral
languages. In my experience , whenever a transcription was required (usually
in an entertainment context, since they were never official languages), people
would just make it up as they went along.

As such, I wouldn’t give too much weight to this or that random source using a
weird northern-European letter to try and legitimise their arbitrary
transcription; but if there is a convincing argument against this position,
I’d love to see it.

------
rullelito
On 6 June 1523, Gustav Vasa was elected king of Sweden. Swedes celebrate this
date as “Svenska flaggans dag”

I doubt even 10% know when this occurs, or why.

~~~
Agentlien
As a Swede I can agree that it seems few of us know why that date was chosen.
However, I'm surprised you think it's uncommon to know which day of the year
it is.

~~~
dagw
It doesn't help that there are two competing stories for why the date is
chosen. The other story I've heard is that it was due to the Swedish
'constitution' being signed on that date in 1808.

~~~
fetbaffe
Instrument of Government of both 1809 and of 1974 was signed on the sixth of
June.

I'm not sure if the 1809 date was picked on purpose but the 1974 date was.
Sixth of June has special place in Swedish history.

Glad it isn't sixth of January.

------
sametmax
And here I thought the Lanteans invented it. I need to rewatch this Stargate
documentary.

~~~
hashmush
It's always funny to see "STARGÅTE", the Norwegian space puzzle [1]. Also, for
more confusing uses of umlauts/diacritics, see the Wikipedia article on "Röck
Döts" [2].

[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/g%C3%A5te](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/g%C3%A5te)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut)

~~~
eesmith
The KIA car company logo bugs me in a similar way. I read it as Kappa Iota
Lambda.

------
tritium
Oh, this is about the history of calligraphy, typography, alphabets and
character sets surrounding the (swedish) letter (which resembles an) “ _A_ ”
with a ring (non)diacritic, and not about the _ångström_ as a unit of
measurement.

EDIT: People are vehement about the status of this particular character, and
that doesn’t change the fact that I expected an article about a unit of
measurement.

    
    
      (yes, I understand that disagreement is 
       afoot, but it has nothing to do with 
       what I originally came here for)

~~~
robin_reala
I think that a Swede would disagree with you that this is an A with a ˚
diacritic; Å is seen here as a seperate letter and granted its own place in
the alphabet:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85#Place_in_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85#Place_in_alphabet)

~~~
henrikschroder
"Ä" is worse, it can be three completely different things depending on
language.

In for example Swedish, it's a distinct letter of the alphabet, representing a
distinct vowel.

In German, it's the letter "A" with an umlaut mark, which is not a distinct
letter of the alphabet, but it is a distinct vowel.

And in French, it's the letter "A" with a diaresis mark, which neither makes
it a distinct letter of the alphabet, nor a distinct vowel, it's just a mark
that signifies that two adjacent vowels should not be pronounced as a
diphtong.

~~~
weinzierl
> In German, it's the letter "A" with an umlaut mark, which is not a distinct
> letter of the alphabet, but it is a distinct vowel.

The umlauts are distinct letters of the German alphabet. The English Wikipedia
says so but still lists them as _special characters_ which is confusing at
best. The German Wikipedia just lists the umlauts as ordinary characters.

>German uses three letter-diacritic combinations (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, Ü/ü) using the
umlaut and one ligature (ß (called Eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)) which
are officially considered distinct letters of the alphabet.[1]

I believe there are just two cases:

\- _A umlaut_ : German, Swedish, etc.

\- _A with diaeresis_ : French, Catalan, etc.

It is important to distinguish both cases because they differ at least in
collation and typography.

In a German dictionary _A with diaeresis_ should be _always_ treated like an
A, while _A umlaut_ should be treated according to the different collation
standards that exist in German. In a German font the dots are closer to the
letter than in a French font.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography#Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography#Alphabet)

~~~
germanier
Confusingly, there are two different collation standards when treating German
umlauts: One for lists of names and one for everything else.

When reciting the alphabet German school kids don't add the umlauts (at least
I didn't – I don't think that has changed in the last decades) and if you ask
someone how many letters the alphabet has they will answer "26" without
hesitation while in Sweden they are treated as distinct characters of the
alphabet in every sense.

~~~
weinzierl
> Confusingly, there are two different collation standards when treating
> German umlauts: One for lists of names and one for everything else.

Yes, this alone is confusing. My point is that it is even more complicated
because strictly the standard only applies to umlauts but not to letters with
diaeresis. Unicode offers a way to treat these two cases differently utilizing
the combining grapheme joiner (CGJ).

>> _The CGJ can also be used in German, for example, to distinguish in sorting
between “ü” in the meaning of u-umlaut, which is the more common case and
often sorted like <u,e>, and “ü” in the meaning u-diaeresis, which is
comparatively rare and sorted like “u” with a secondary key weight._ [1, page
850]

> When reciting the alphabet German school kids don't add the umlauts (at
> least I didn't – I don't think that has changed in the last decades) and if
> you ask someone how many letters the alphabet has they will answer "26"
> without hesitation while in Sweden they are treated as distinct characters
> of the alphabet in every sense.

You have a point here and maybe the English Wikipedia isn't so wrong in
listing them as special characters. Being special doesn't make _A umlaut_ a
funky A though. It still is a letter in it's own right.

[1] Unicode Standard 10.0:
[http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/UnicodeStandar...](http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/UnicodeStandard-10.0.pdf)

~~~
aexaey
For what it worth, Dutch has "ij", which could be a letter, or diphthong, or
two unrelated letters (in words borrowed from French, for example), and could
also be written as "ij", or as "ÿ", or even "y".

There is no dedicated key on computer keyboard for it, but you are supposed to
remember it's a unit when capitalizing, for example IJmuiden.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJ_(digraph)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJ_\(digraph\))

