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| | languagehat.com: Comment on LIGATURES. |
 | | In the Scandinavian languages, they are, of course, a normal part of the alphabet - in fact, your wouldn't be able to say the alphabet without saying them. |
 | | And of course the umlauted vowels of German don't exist in the alphabet, either - they seem to inhabit a limbo-stage between being considered as letters in their own right, and being seen as nothing more than mutations deviating from the norm. |
 | | Actually, it was two s's, but the top of the first "long" s curled down to meet the second, which then looked like a z after the rich variety of early letter forms had been lost. |
| www.languagehat.com /mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=584 (1014 words) |
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