The footnote "***", while specifically referenced on a number of
occasions, is to be understood throughout.

> ... a NewZealandish meter ... to be different in size

We have many many thousands of different sizes of meters in NZ - but
all our metres are the same size :-) (or, are meant to be).

> ... Could it be that you have a BE-centric viewpoint? :)

I'd hope so :-).
But, more a PV* one, plus a BE** centric keyboard at an obvious (to
me) level.
The same does not explain and is not of the same type of variation as
the transposition of "re" to "er" in words***.

While my daughter could, no doubt, were it not that she was currently
about 2000 km away from here,  make her text sing with *** umlauts,
graves, acutes, cedillas, carons, krouzeks, tremas, breves, kahakos
(macrons), ogoneks, hooks, dagesh****, mappiq, horns, (I can do tildes
:-)), titlos and more, using the very same keyboard that I am using
now, such a feat would require of me more education that happens to
have happened to date. For most purposes my missives are understood at
a basic level with the accents removed from my characters. [[Do note
that I'm not seeking to justify this lack of capability - just noting
it]].  A keyboard and/or software system that allows of ease of
variation of basic characters by people with semi-fixed (in this area
at least) brain paths would be a blessing.

Have you ever tried to send messages from a PC which thinks that you
want to converse in Chinese and is utterly dedicated to ensuring that
you do so ? :-). When sending emails from Taiwan I have been forced on
occasion to use Alt-nnn combinations to obtain "English" text or even
to cutting and pasting letters from other messages. I'm certain that
there would have been easy ways to convince said PCs that I wanted to
actually produce the characters shown on the keyboards that I was
using, but I could not at the time find anyone who could both
understand my question and answer it.

I'm aware that discussions like this are unlikely to produce
satisfactory outcomes when dealing with people who are not aware of
the existence of Aluminium :-).




        Russell


* Plain Vanilla

** There is ONLY British English. All other forms of xE are impostors.

Have you ever herd of eg English French, English German, French
Spanish etc? :-)
I imagine that eg "Brazilian Spanish" may be a meaningful concept.

I find it amusing that English is the *** Lingua Franca of the modern
world. I imagine that the Chinese are working on that.

***  Any requisite speech marks implied.


**** I'm not at all sure whether the plural of Hebrew terms deserves
an appended s in the current context so I have not used one. In other
cases where I have added an s it may in fact be superfluous.


How do you say "Deja vu" in French?


______________

Useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key

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