Diacritical Marks in Unicode

Adding a new keyboard from a language pack that is installed does not require Admin rights. I just tested it on a machine to which I do not have Admin rights.

But my point is not so much that contextual swapping of keyboard layouts is a great workflow, but that the emoji keyboard for anything that is a regular part of typing text is an intolerably bad workflow.

> The emoji keyboard is always available in Windows 10 once you cross its release version.

No, it can be disabled by an admin, so if you have a computer someone else administers (the problem you raise with alternative keyboard layouts) it might not be there. (There's no convenient dedicated UI, but it can be done, and enough people want to do it that you can easily find the how-to's in response to questions online.)

Is to use diaeresis to help teach a short list of words, like "coop", in order to distinguish between two pronunciation forms ("We bought the chicken coop at the farm coöp.")?

If so, that specific form can be fixed by writing it "co-op". How many other words are in that category at the elementary school level, and how many can be addressed by using a '-' instead of a diaeresis?

As it is, elementary school teachers already need to teach that 'lead glass' and 'lead the way' are different; and how some words like 'read' change pronunciation in the present and past tense but are spelled the same. So it's not like there's much of a fix to have a handful of words with a diaeresis.

If we change to use diaeresis, what other words will need to be changed in to fit the rule?

Don't jeer at the seër. (Most "ee" words have a long e ("seed", "seem", "seen").)

I'm a top tier square knot tiër.

I am so good at peeing I am a peër without peer.

Just like cooperative might be shortened to co-op or coop, coaxial cable might be shorted to co-ax or to coax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable uses all three! But if we teach diaeresis, then we'll have a third spelling -- coäx.

I could go on. My point is, the diaeresis rule isn't that easy to explain to elementary school students.

By comparison, teachers already use syllabification (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabification ), which naturally extends to these cases where diaeresis might help!. Quoting that Wikipedia entry:

> The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English orthography (e.g., syl-la-ble) and with a period when transcribing the actually spoken syllables in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (e.g., [ˈsɪl.ə.bᵊɫ]). For presentation purposes, typographers may use an interpunct (Unicode character U+00B7, e.g., syl·la·ble), a special-purpose "hyphenation point" (U+2027, e.g., syl‧la‧ble), or a space (e.g., syl la ble).

So, when teaching, write "co‧op" and "pe‧er" and "se‧er" and "co‧ax". I think that's what my primary school used.

This doesn't even require fancy Unicode interpuncts - hyphens also work. That's the "co-op" solution I mentioned earlier. Only, it can be applied to every multi-syllabic word.

You can see examples (if you have an archive.org account) of hyphens used in teaching syllables at https://archive.org/details/teachingphonicsf02edstar/page/90... .

FWIW, here's a 1852 book using acute accents to indicate stress, which teaching elementary English grammar - https://archive.org/details/anelementaryeng00lathgoog/page/n... .

When was it in common usage? You can't "go back" to something that never existed. And I showed it doesn't appear to be common in the 1800s.

I can totally blame printing for contributing to the loss of Þ, but by the 1400s it was growing less common. It in turn had replaced ð in Old English, showing the printing press isn't the only thing which can change orthography. But I don't see how the printing press a contributing factor to the change in popularity of ö, which you asserted was the case.

> The diaresis helps disambiguate

FWIW, I use "co-op" when I want to disambiguate that case.

There are two issues here. One is "use the diareses in teaching", and the other is "bring back the common usage." Your example only justifies the first.

Consider Hebrew orthography. It does not indicate vowels. However, niqqud "is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. ... In modern Israeli orthography niqqud is seldom used, except in specialised texts such as dictionaries, poetry, or texts for children or for new immigrants to Israel ... [although] it no longer reflects the current pronunciation.." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqqud

Arabic orthography is similar. "Tashkīl is optional to represent missing vowels and consonant length. Modern Arabic is always written with the i‘jām—consonant pointing, but only religious texts, children's books and works for learners are written with the full tashkīl—vowel guides and consonant length." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics#harakat

Clearly pedagogy can use a variant orthography that is not in common use!

But if you go that route, why limit yourself to diaresis?

English can use a grave accent to indicate if a vowel is to be pronounced ("learned" vs. "learnèd"). This is mostly in poetry and lyrics. A unified pedagogy might use "coôp" instead of "coöp".

English can use an acute accent to indicate when an vowel is not silent. (The drink "maté", when the original Spanish is "mate").

For teaching, the acute can be used to disambiguate between words with the same spelling but different stress ("cónvert" vs. "convért" or "désert" vs. "desért").

And if we're talking about teaching ambiguous words, what about words like "bow" ("ribbon and bow" vs. "the ship's bow") and "close" ("close the door" vs "it was a close games")? I don't even have a notation, outside of IPA, to represent those.

This means diaresis addresses only a small fraction of the ambiguity in English orthography. Is it really worthwhile to give extra attention on this one facet, and reduce time spent on other facets?