Re: A woman's place (was Time and place in the breakout novel)

"John F. Eldredge" schrieb:

On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:41:04 -0800, David Friedman
<ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1hcgvru.1v5bptysv62c9N%usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Catja Pafort) wrote:

Patricia wrote:

There are other considerations as well: yes, much of the conversation could
take place elsewhere, but part of the point of those early chapters is that
Ekaterin has been confined and compressed -- in part voluntarily -- into a
traditional Barrayaran "women's role." Which is a bit more than "kinder,
kirche, kuche," but in terms of then-available options, not *much* more.
And the "kuche" is strongly symbolic of all that, no matter what it looks
like...and providing little or no description increases the
symbolism-effect, because each reader generates his/her own mental version
of an archetypal kitchen.

May I offer you an 'e' completely free of charge?

Is it an e or an umlaut?
[...]

In German, "ue" and "u-with-umlaut" are used interchangeably, as are
"oe" and "o-with-umlaut".

Not in German outside geek circles. In a newspaper or a school essay,
'ue' instead of 'ü' would be an error. If the umlauts were optional,
they wouldn't have their own keys on a standard-size german keyboard
(the right hand has 'zuiopü' and below 'hjklöä').
Anyway, either version would be better than 'Kuche', which looks like
a typo for 'Kuchen' to me and suggest the wrong 'ch' sound.

Around 1500, german umlauts were (still?) written/typeset as an a/o/u
with a tiny 'e' above, but that was a matter of convention; i'm
reasonably certain the umlauts didn't evolve out of diphthongs:
they're modifications of their 'base' vowel, and this vowel can still
be found in the word stem most of the time. (For 'Küche', you have to
go all the way back to old high german 'chuhhina'. Looks like a
textbook example of an i-induced umlaut, though.)

--
Een koe is een merkwaardig beest; wat er ook in haar geest moge zijn,
haar laatste woord is altijd boe.

.

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