Vocabulary by Language #2

Because they aren't considered accent marks in Swedish, but independent letters. There's a similar difference between a and å as is between c and k from a Swedish person's point of view. (Disregared the fact that one pair is consonants and the other is vowels.) Same goes for Finnish and a couple of other languages as well.

@sillie fair enough that they are considered different letters in Swedish, but in English, and thus on a typical English keyboard, we don't have them, so we can't put them in. This is a problem with any cross linguistic writing. For example isiNdebele/Xhosa/Zulu have clicks, so how does one write that in Latin characters? Arabic and Hebrew both (should) have a gutteral letter (Ayin) which usually gets rendered in English either missing or a '. A sound like 'ch' in loch gets rendered in English as j when it comes from Spanish, ch/kh/h from Arabic or Hebrew, g in seTswana. There will always be something lost in translation, which is why people often prefer reading books/articles in the original if they can.

You can still use accent marks in English, it's just a bit more difficult. The trouble with dropping the accent on words like Cafe is that you then pronounce it wrong. It's pronounced Caf-ay not Caff and thus the accent makes it clearer.

If someone doesn't know what Caffe or café or cafe means because it is pronounced a little differently, they are in trouble if they travel the world, or for that matter if they travel round countries where local accents change every few miles, such as in the UK. ........ Don't sweat the small stuff ....... for it's all small stuff.

People are already in trouble if they don't know how to match spelling and pronunciation in English. It's basically like Chinese: remember what the word looks like because it could be spelled a dozen ways.

In the case of English, pronunciation is something we need to learn word by word. However, when it comes to these kind of cases where this word in question is clearly not an English word, we should make a difference between A and Ä as that can make the meaning completely different.

For example (in Fin.): valittaa = to complain, välittää = to care

Not on the keyboard? But yet you can still write don't and can't... if you can use the ' symbol you can use the " symbol... just do "and then the vowel... So by your logic with the english keyboard you can't type can't and don't ?? (and can't quote)

(And I am disregarding the fact that you can type any letter on the typical english keyboard... just use the alt key.. but those arent shown on the keys so I am ok with considering them as "not on the keyboard" But äåéþüúíóöáßðøæñµç really is just as easy as typing a capital letter.. (Typing that was just as fast as qwetyuiopasdlznm, just hold the right alt button down)

I am really curious if you also would have said/think that you can't type café on an english keyboard. (I am honestly kind of baffled by the "we don't have them, so we can't put them in. It is like saying I can't type a capital A because there is no key for it on the keyboard ...(though all letters on the keys are shown in capitals).

Btw café caffe cafe etc. In some countries it means coffee, in others it means a bar/pub (where you go at night to drink alcohol), in others it means a place to drink coffee ( and coffeeshop means something else again).

And I thought it wás written in english with the correct symbols. But I guess not. I assumed it would/should be because the word has been taken as a whole from another language, and has not been translated or anglicized, like smorgasboard (partly translated), smurgosbord (partly transliterated), or even smeargooseboard (translated but not as it is used in english, no geese are ( usually..) involved).

Btw I think in dutch we dó use the original swedish spelling..

If you get mad at English-speakers who don't use Swedish letters then you should be similarly mad at Swedes who write "Beijing" instead of 北京.

I don't think thats a particularly convincing argument. you could argue that any letter with an accent is a "different letter". In french the different forms e, é, è, and ê all have different pronunciations, but they get omitted when these words work their way into the english language. so why is that any different from Swedish or Spanish?

@tom88, in French, é, è, ê and ë are not considered different letters, but the same letter with different accents.

Karamchand's correct, they are two different letters with different pronunciations, but when translating the latter (which we don't have in the English alphabet) to English we get around the problem by spelling it the way it is pronounced, "ny", as it is in "canyon".

People are failing to understand that å ä and ö are actual letters in the Swedish alphabet. It is nothing like the "é" in "café". We have three more letters than the English alphabet does! It goes "...v w x y z å ä ö"

Not that important ...... I'd say Sergeant.

In my area kielbasa is different from a Polish sausage. Polish sausage is smoked after cooking. Also kielbasa is used quite frequently in conversation.

I'm a dunce and spelt it wrong four times and then decided I had the answer wrong -.-