> coördinates
> coöperating
The article has multiple instances of umlauts over the letter o. The first one I saw, figured it was a typo. But several more appeared. Strange, I wonder why?
> coöperating
The article has multiple instances of umlauts over the letter o. The first one I saw, figured it was a typo. But several more appeared. Strange, I wonder why?
You'd generally use it for proper nouns (like Brontë or Boötes) and rare loanwords - it doesn't seem very useful for common dictionary words, since anyone who can understand the word itself probably knows how to pronounce it.
There was a restaurant in my town -- the sign is still up but it's closed -- called "Cooper's Coop". For a while after they put their sign up I thought it was a cooperative/coöperative. If there'd been a diaresis I would have known it was the chicken coop sort of coop they had in mind.
/ku:p/ for chickens
/'koʊ.ɑp/ for cooperatives
People sometimes spell the latter "co-op" (as an alternative to the New Yorker's "coöp") to make clear that it's two syllables. There's also a college merchandise shop in Cambridge, MA, called The Coop that seems to encourage people to use the chicken-oriented pronunciation as a joke.
Except that there wouldn't have been a diaeresis, because (chicken) coop doesn't have one.
""" We do change our style from time to time. My predecessor (and the former keeper of the comma shaker) told me that she used to pester the style editor, Hobie Weekes, who had been at the magazine since 1928, to get rid of the diaeresis. She found it fussy. She said that once, in the elevator, he told her he was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died. This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since. """
I am grateful it persists.
As someone learning Dutch, it is VERY helpful in words like zeeën - ( zee-en - seas). Much easier to know what it is vs. zeeen. I hope it is similarly helpful for foreigners learning English.
I can't say I've ever seen it used for co-ordinate or co-operate. Usually these are typed with the hyphen or nothing.
But, it's more common on some words than others - Noël, aïoli, and naïve come to mind. None would ever appear with a hyphen (at least in my experience).
And zoölogical and reëlect just look WRONG to me. I don't think you'd ever use a hyphen with zoological, but might (or might not) with re-elect.
All three of those were borrowed from French, which uses the diaeresis, so this is "just" keeping the original French spelling.
> I don't think you'd ever use a hyphen with zoological, but might (or might not) with re-elect.
The hyphen only works with words where the vowels came together as a result of compounding (here, adding a prefix like re- or co- to the beginning of another word that already starts with a vowel).
At least in Noël and naïve, the vowels came together because French lost a <t> that was present in Latin between two vowels -- interestingly in both cases here a word related to "birth" (natalis and nativus).
> And yet we use the diaeresis for the same reason that we use the hyphen: to keep the cow out of co-workers[0]
2. This is the New Yorker (pretentiöus)