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Hegseth declares, 'I only speak American' to room full of foreign leaders (www.irishstar.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 38 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (9 children)

Because that's how it's spelled.

Spanish uses ü, although relatively rarely. It signifies that you should pronounce the u and not merge it into nearby vowels.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    English does the same with most vowels, it's called diaeresis though the only place I commonly see it is in the New Yorker (funnily enough googling what it is called led me to a New Yorker article about it.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I mean at this point it seems that English doesn't do this, but maybe at one point it saw limited use.

    Except "naïve", that still happens. But English is nothing if not wildly inconsistent.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago

    Fair enough point, I also see it in normal English usage for proper nouns but basically nowhere else.

    Wikipedia agrees with you (and also calls out the New Yorker vehemently disagrees which I find oddly comforting and hilarious)

    In British English this usage has been considered obsolete for many years, and in US English, although it persisted for longer, it is now considered archaic as well.[3] Nevertheless, it is still used by the US magazine The New Yorker.[4]

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