Talk:hëlfen

RFV
Not doubting the existence of the verbs, but the spelling. Umlauted e? 21:44, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm... umlauted e is common enough in pedagogical material about Middle High German (and Old High German too, I believe), but I don't think it was used in contemporary writing. I could be mistaken about that, though. But if I'm right, these should probably be moved to helfen, werfen, and werden but the headword line should include head=hëlfen, head=wërfen, and head=wërden, as we already do for pedagogical diacritics like macrons in Latin and Old English. —Angr 22:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * What kind of significance does it have, though? Is it a real difference in sound or is it just an etymological aid like the difference between ai, ái and aí is in Gothic? 22:51, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * According to Middle High German, "Grammars (as opposed to textual editions) often distinguish between <ë> and , the former indicating the mid-open /ɛ/ which derived from Germanic /e/, the latter (often with a dot beneath it) indicating the mid-close /e/ which results from primary umlaut. No such orthographic distinction is made in MHG manuscripts." So it's a real difference in sound, but one that wasn't actually indicated in writing at the time. —Angr 09:33, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, I see. I'll move the entries then. Personally it seems a bit strange to me that original ë is lower than umlauted e, since in most languages it was the other way around. 13:14, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but that's what I've read in other sources than the WP article too, so I'm pretty sure WP got it right. —Angr 13:33, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Is it umlaut from /o/ or from /a/? Also, it's ironic they use the on the non-umlaut form. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:40, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * From /a/. Umlaut from /o/ is spelled ö. It is weird that the tradition is to put the same diacritic over e to indicate a non-umlaut form as is put over o and u to indicate umlaut forms. I wonder if it has anything to do with the use of ë in Luxembourgish. Unfortunately, Luxembourgish language doesn't go into the history of that letter; it just tells us it's pronounced [ə]. —Angr 13:56, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Luxembourgish ë is historically derived from umlauted u, but there also seem to be several words where it derives from i. I'm not quite sure how it developed but it seems that in certain environments, original short [ø] was centralised and unrounded to [ɘ] or [ɜ]. 14:11, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Deliberately putting the cat amongst the pigeons, don't we only require one mention for extinct languages? Wouldn't these pass in that case? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:01, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * If an agreement has been made on what sources qualify as such. But we haven't made any, so no... 17:24, 8 October 2012 (UTC)