--- Forwarded Message from Derek Roff <[log in to unmask]> ---

>Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 15:41:22 -0700
>From: Derek Roff <[log in to unmask]>
>To: LLTI-Editor <[log in to unmask]>,       Deanne Cobb <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: #7063 German special character
>In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
>References:  <[log in to unmask]>

Perhaps you could simulate the character that you want, umlaut over 
hyphen, with an umlaut and the combining macron.  I haven't tried it, 
I'm just thinking that the macron is one of the few characters that I 
am aware of that has a standalone form ($AF) and a combining form 
($304) in Unicode.  There may be other "combining" options in Word or 
HTML.

On the other hand, perhaps the best solution is to provide the 
student with more comprehensible information. I suspect that the 
obscure, specialized shortcuts that appear in dictionaries, were 
created by a league of insane typesetters in preceding centuries as 
revenge against the elite classes.  I may be wrong about that, but it 
is clear that many students find such typography very confusing or 
completely opaque.  Indeed, PhD professors find some of these 
typographical quirks confusing, too, in languages that they haven't 
studied.

A teacher faces the dilemma of whether to do what the dictionary 
does, so that students get used to it, or to print things in a way 
that students are likely to understand the first time.  I tend to 
pick the latter approach, since in my experience, students are 
already frustrated enough with learning a new language, and their 
motivation and attention levels are diminished by additional, 
unnecessary levels of typographical obfuscation.  I've tried both 
approaches, and neither one fully solves the problem.  I am no longer 
surprised when an advanced student misunderstands dictionary 
typography after several years of study.

Derek

->> From: Deanne Cobb <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sender: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 14:29:31 -0600
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: German special character
>
> I am currently working on developing an exercise for German, and I
> would like to be able to type the German words with the singular
> and  the plural as they would appear in a dictionary (or textbook),
> eg. die  Straße, -n.  This is fine until I run into a word that
> takes an umlaut  over a previous vowel in the plural form (ie. das
> Haus, die Häuser).   The way that this is to be written is das
> Haus, -"er, except that the  quotation marks are supposed to appear
> as an umlaut above the dash.   Word 2000 doesn't list this as a
> special character and I have been  unable to find a unicode or html
> code for it.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
> Deanne Cobb
> Language Lab Manager
> Language Resource Centre
> University of Regina

Derek Roff
Language Learning Center, Ortega Hall Rm 129, University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131  505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
Internet: [log in to unmask]