OT: "real" letters [Was: 10.31 second kernel compile]

[Itai Nahshon]

> > Hey, careful there! Those English speakers stole that name from German,
> > and in German those umlauts are real letters, too. Incidentally, my ae is
> > next to the '# key ...

There are many ways to count "real" letters. Eg., Hebrew (my
native lang.) counts just 22 but there are 27 glyphs and many
combinations with points (Nikkud) and accents. The Spanish count
27 letters in their alphabet (ñ is a real letter) while the Brazilians
count only 23 (the 26 English letters minus K,W and Y). Some
east-Asian languages haven't finished the count yet (or never
have started)...

> There are still a couple of places you can legitimaely use an ae symbol in
> English. It's not quite dead yet 8)

The only example that I've seen in English texts is use of ï as in "naïve".

I know that ä is used in German and in other languages but if I see
a text that contains a double-ä or 3 ä in one word that's almost certainly
Finnish...

-- Itai