Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dewie2 | Hacker News Reader

I guess you're right about their use in words in general. I'm not sure you're right about their use in names in particular.

Firstly, people and places are still named with "aa" rather than "å". They aren't simply spelled alternatively depending on the mood or the keyboard of the writer. So it seems that, since they deliberately choose one over the other, they care whether it is spelled in a certain way.

Secondly, we make a distinction between whether someone is named "Christian" or "Kristian", for example. According to your logic, it wouldn't matter since there is no difference except spelling between these two names. But it does.

Do you have any authoritive source (linguistic, or etiquette) that says that such names can be spelled however the writer feels like?

View on HN

I simply tried (and failed, it seems) to say that they are generally considered to be equivalent, and that it's okay to use “aa” when translating a name with “å”. Reasons for this could be not knowing how to write an ‘å’ (or Ł, đ, ç, ì, etc.) or simply not wanting to distract one's readers. I do not have an authoritative source.

> I simply tried (and failed, it seems) to say that they are generally considered to be equivalent,

Do you think I have a hard time understanding that the intent in this case is to use "aa" as a substitute for "å"? Let me put your mind at ease: I get, and got, that intent. I am not so inexperienced with reading or writing foreign words that I haven't noticed that one sometimes takes some liberties with spelling words using one's own characters, as long as the meaning is clear. My concern is more about whether it is proper to do that with names. Specifically, Norwegian names.

What I choose to do when I can't input some name because of foreign characters is to copy paste it when I need it. That might be tedious, but at least it doesn't require any sophistication.

>My concern is more about whether it is proper to do that with names. Specifically, Norwegian names.

Yes. This is common all over the place. Nobody really cares.

Source: I'm Norwegian.

EDIT: >Secondly, we make a distinction between whether someone is named "Christian" or "Kristian", for example. According to your logic, it wouldn't matter since there is no difference except spelling between these two names. But it does.

Well, thats a strawman as i read it. You can't compare "normal" names and names with special letters in them. It does not really make sense. Some systems, that does not use Unicode as an example, would have no problems with "Kristian", but "Knausgård" might bring problems. Thus you write "Knausgaard". This also applies to street names, town and other words.

As i said, this is quite common in Norway. Nobody really minds it at all.

> Yes. This is common all over the place. Nobody really cares.

> Source: I'm Norwegian.

As you've probably guessed, as am I. So then we have two apparent Norwegians (me and uer haakon) who cares. So maybe "somebody cares", after all? :)

> Well, thats a strawman as i read it. You can't compare "normal" names and names with special letters in them. It does not really make sense.

Right, normal with scare quotes. What is that supposed to mean? So then, "Ch" is not "special" compared to "å" simply because of some technical limitation? Because "å" is somewhat distinct to the Scandinavian languages? Why is "Christian" and "Kristian" normal, distinct names, while the use of "aa" does not produce distinct names? In fact, as you can see in this thread, some people name their child "Håkon", others name them "Haakon". "aa" is not simply something you throw in as a replacement for "å" in names.

This is a Danish example, but so be it: Many Danish places have gone over to using "aa" instead of "å". So this was a deliberate decision, not simply "we just spell it however we want". They had to make a decision. In constrast, Språkrådet[1] of Norway does apparently not want to do the same for places like "Ålesund", for example. So at least as far as Språkrådet is concerned, the use of "å" or "aa" in names does matter and they consider them to be distinct "characters". Not simply shallow pseudo-typographical conventions.

"Ch" is not really a (compound) character in the Norwegian language, as in Norwegian words (outside of, perhaps, loan words). And yet, we respect people's names enough to call people who are "Christian" as "Christian"; not "Kristian". Did people who named their child "Christian" miss the "k" letter on their keyboard? Most likely not. Yet they chose that spelling, and we respect that.

[1] http://www.nrk.no/norge/_-ikke-stedsnavn-med-aa-i-norge-1.70...

> As i said, this is quite common in Norway. Nobody really minds it at all.

Yes, your idea that your experiences totally overrides and eclipse my own ("nobody really minds at all") was noted the first time.

So then, "Ch" is not "special" compared to "å" simply because of some technical limitation?

Um. Yes? Precisely?

Like it or not, ASCII is not gone yet.

Interesting, in Denmark, å/aa are generally interchangeable in placenames. Some people have strong preferences, but the preferences aren't uniform. Aarhus/Århus for example can be spelled either way; even the municipal government has switched back and forth about which one it recommends (it switched to Århus in 1948, and back to Aarhus in 2011).

With personal names, I've usually gone by what the person themselves does when they write in English. It's quite common for people to use a different spelling in their "English" professional life. Sometimes this is å->aa, other times it is even just å->a. In this case, Knausgård appears to spell his own name as Knausgaard when writing in English, so it doesn't seem disrespectful to me if people writing about him in English spell his name the same way he has it printed on the cover of his own English-edition books.

This is just stupid. If you start reading English language texts and sites a bit more you will find it is common for them to substitute our Nordic characters with various combinations depending on what style they have chosen to follow.

Usage is authority. Write the way you feel it should be written, read with the intent of comprehension, nothing more. Relax and move on to more worthwhile causes.

> This is just stupid.

Please follow the HN guidelines:

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

We are humans communicating not robots. I think the policy i stupid (see previous sentence for argument.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com