I spotted this a little while ago at the end of the Alaska Airlines terminal at lovely SeaTac. It's a smoothie shop—closed at the horrific hour of 6:30am—but bedecked in gratuitous umlauts and diaerses.
Unfortunately, the camera wasn't able to meter the shot correctly, so you'll really have to squint to figure out what the hell is going on. Or, I could just tell you—the sign on the right reads:
Frëshens
Smoöthie
Company
Agh, what?
First off, the ë in Frëshens doesn't make sense as an umlaut since, well, you can't umlaut an e; and it doesn't make as a diaeresis since the e isn't adjacent to another vowel.
And then there's the ö in Smoöthie: this one works as either an umlaut or as a diaeresis, but you'll end up with something that sounds like Smooerthie or Smo-othie, respectively.
I hate this crap.
From Wikipedia:
Ë is the 8th letter of the Albanian alphabet and represents /ə/. It is the most commonly used letter of the language comprising 10 percent of all writings.
So it makes sense, it is a separate vowel.
From Wikipedia:
Ë is the 8th letter of the Albanian alphabet and represents /ə/. It is the most commonly used letter of the language comprising 10 percent of all writings.
So it makes sense, it is a separate vowel.
Sorry for the two comments, it looked like something was wrong at first
That's OK. It happens.
...is Frëshens really supposed to be Albanian?
--D