Hello,
I am using diacritics (in this case the umlaut) when they (A) aren't supposed to be there, and (B) are only there because it looks better. Is this good or tacky? It is for a personal project, so nothing commercial, and no one who really cares is going to see it, but for future reference is that "tacky" or is it fine.
—An English Speaker
(I know this isn't directly type related, but I figured you would know)
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Comments
Are you talking about examples like Spin̈al Tap (which, btw, is actually used as a diacritic in Jacaltec)? The only sensible interpretation of your question that I can come up with is that you're asking whether it's legitimate to design the base characters to match the diacritics rather than vice versa. While I suppose that's always possible it seems like you're putting the cart before the horse.
It can be deliberately comedic (e.g. Spinal Tap band name and movie title, with the dieresis on the n). That can work for me. But otherwise, I usually find it tacky. Häagen-Dazs especially irritates me with their made-up supposedly–faux-Danish brand-name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut
In case of “The Länd”, it works for me (and is actually somewhat funny) because Land is written the same way in German and English, and adding the diaeresis actually causes German readers to pronounce the word as they would speaking English, i.e. [lɑnt] → [lent]. And the land Baden-Württemberg is called “Ländle” [ˈlɛntlə] (a diminutive) in the local dialect. Trying to transfer that dialect nickname onto the big international stage of English is a bit of self-deprecating humour.
Placing a diaresis on consonants would leave German readers confused, as their function is undefined there
Cold comfort as the world burns.
The Latin alphabet was used for the Latin language. Later different monks shoehorned it into different languages mapping the same letters to different sounds, and these discrepancies would evolve into humor as more people became more cosmopolitan. I happen to love hearing foreigners make fun of American accents.