I have a rather cheeky friend who knows just how to get me going. So the other day I arrived at my desk to find this residing in front of my monitor.
Noel, since it is missing it's diaeresis a rant was assured.
Like waving a red rag in front of a bull she knew this would unleash a mix of laughter interspersed with lengthy rants about how once again the silly season had encouraged diaeresis abuse. What does one do with this ornate decoration that in it’s current state was more suited as a name plate for a guy with the name Noel. Well a few pieces of dowel, red paint and a hot glue gun were the solution.
Now it's Noël!
Now what was an ornament to the poor spelling of the Xmas season, is now a true representation for Noël with the diaeresis in red. Red because red is a cool colour, it is loosely associated with the fat dude that delivers gifts and finally cause it looks like a correction I have added in red pen to an incorrectly spelled word.
I loved the gift for the cheeky intentions, and cause it made me laugh. Now I love it more because it now highlights, in red, the pivotally important diaeresis.
A penis called Noel?
OK I realise I’m flogging a dead horse here. But here is photographic proof of the sort of diaeresis abuse that we see around Xmas. Now I’m sorry this isn’t just a matter of poor grammar but in terms of aesthetics; why would you put it on your house? It looks like a red and green penis! So clearly this is a large red and green house penis that they have named Noel. It certainly only represents Noël in the mind of those whose mind is muddled by the Xmas spirit.
The other night a mate is driving me home and we drive past a house. It was one of those houses where the totally individualistic owner had done the entirely original thing of covering their house in idiotic Christmas lights. Now Christmas is a fun time but those lights really annoy me. Besides the obvious waste of electricity and the waste of time, they simply show a high level of both decadence and banality in my not so humble opinion.
But even worse this buffoon committed a grammatical error. You see emblazoned on his house, in red and green glory, was NOEL. So the assumption is that this is Noel’s house because that word certainly isn’t the Christmas word Noël. Now the two dots over the e form a diaeresis. This looks the same as the umlaut but has a slightly different role. It tells you to say the vowel pair as separate sounds. We could write co-operate with a diaeresis as follows: coöperate; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did, and the New Yorker magazine recently did too. So back to the Xmas word. Noel is pronounced as no-ll, but Noël is pronounced as no-ell. The diaeresis also appears in Citroën, so we should say (when anglicised) sit-ro-en, not sit-ron.
Yet another annoyance of Christmas: Diaeresis abuse!
Scrooge Copeland discussing the big issues here at the Soapbox!
