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How do you spell Kaanga?

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Bob Hughes:
Is it Kaanga?  Ka'a'nga?  Kaänga?

narfstar:
It is actually Ka*a*nga with the asterix being dots and it is Ka*a*nga Jungle King

Yoc:
DCM's software doesn't like special characters in any file names, etc.
Upload a file with any of them and it buggers the file.

moondood:
Funny--I was just downloading a Kaanga or two and was wondering about the pronunciation.

Those dots are called an umlat--most commonly found in European languages--Scandinavia--German, etc.

To tell the truth--I don't know how to pronounce an umlat-accented vowel.

Since I was a kid in the 70's, I pronounced the comic Ka-anga--with a pause where the dash is--but that's probably 'cause I thought the title was actually: Ka'anga.

I'm certainly not an expert on African languages, but that pronunciation seemed appropriate to the content.

But now that I know it's an umlat in the logo and not an apostrophe--I'm just not sure.

Moondood

John C:
To answer the thread title, R-O-L...hang on, that's something else.  (Also appropriate, but not for written formats, "K-3-A-N-G-A, but the three is silent.)  Cue crickets...

Anyway, yes, the dieresis (German's umlaut, basically) in English (from the French) says "this vowel is pronounced, and unrelated to it's neighbors."  Thus, the name "Noel" is pronounced as one syllable, while "Noël" is pronounced as in "nobody from Superman's family.  If you read enough old books, you'll also find that most double-vowels that come in compounded (or other aggregate) words are often marked the same way for the same reason, coöperation being the biggie.  So it's probably pronounced Kah-Angah, where the latter is "anger" with a dropped-r at the end (think Bostonian pronunciation).

It's just a guess, but the wider use of typed correspondence (with respect to hand-written or typeset works, where any formatting or marking is possible) has led accenting to fall out of favor.  I think it's an educated guess, though, because there's the tradition (also carried over from French, and I believe it's also the Spanish rule for the tilde) that capitalized letters are accented only optionally--because under many mechanical conditions, you can't guarantee that you'll have space above the full-sized form when printing.

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