Grapheme clusters, a.k.a.real characters

[Mikhail V]

ChrisA wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 6:05 AM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2017-07-18, Steve D'Aprano <steve+python at pearwood.info> wrote:
>>
>>> That's neither better nor worse than the system used by English and French,
>>> where letters with dicritics are not distinct letters, but guides to
>>> pronunciation.
>>
>>>_Neither system is right or wrong, or better than the other._
>>
>>
>> If that is said just "not to hurt anybody" then its ok.
>> Though this statement is pretty absurd, not so many
>> (intelligent) people will buy this out today.

>Let me give you one concrete example: the letter "ö". In English, it
>is (very occasionally) used to indicate diaeresis, where a pair of
>letters is not a double letter - for example, "coöperate". (You can
>also hyphenate, "co-operate".) In German, it is the letter "o" with a
>pronunciation mark (umlaut), and is considered the same letter as "o".
>In Swedish, it is a distinct letter, alphabetized last (following z,
>å, and ä, in that order). But in all these languages, it's represented
>the exact same way.
>
>Steven is pointing out that there's nothing fundamentally wrong about
>using "ö" as a unique letter, nor is there anything fundamentally
>wrong about using it as "o" with a pronunciation mark. Which I agree
>with.
>

Ok, in this narrow context I can also agree.
But in slightly wider context that phrase may sound almost like:
"neither geometrical shape is better than the other as a basis
for a wheel. If you have polygonal wheels, they are still called wheels."


Mikhail