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[Opinions] lol, maybe her parents are heavy metal fans.
in reply to a message by Kit
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hahahah! Why not go all the way, with Rëgän!
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That is bad ass! ChlöëI am extra-badass now
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Ha ha "Rock Dots"
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Well, from what I read about an umlaut, it just means that the sound of the vowel is different from what you'd expect. In Chloe, the "e" makes a sound. In Regan, the "e" is a long "eee" as opposed to the sound "eh" or "a" sound.
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Since Regan has no other pesky vowels near the e, such clarification is not needed and is only for decoration or "coolness" - like rock dots.
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Not understanding. If it makes people pronounce it with a long "e" as opposed to "eh" like they would Megan, what's wrong with it?
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But, Regan is conventionally pronounced REE-gan, not RAY-gan. If you just spell it Regan, I think most people will say REE-gan. Like in the Exorcist. Regan "RAY-gan" is the unconventional way. A lot of people pronounce Megan as MEE-gan, too. The conventional pronunciation of Megan where I live is MEG-an, like "beggin'" not like MAY-gan. I can hardly imagine anyone assuming Regan is "REG-an."I'm inclined to pronounce Rëgan as "RAY-gan" because the mark seems to be telling me it is pronounced differently from what is normal. YMMVAnyway, Rëgan seems to be inspired by names like Chloë and Brontë, but it ends up looking pretty airheaded, because the mark in those names is there to tell you that the ë is pronounced as a separate syllable, not to tell you that it's EE instead of AY. =\

This message was edited 6/24/2011, 11:24 AM

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Perhaps it's true that RAY-gan is the unconventional way to say it, but from my reading on the name, there are a lot of people who spell it Regan, but pronounce it RAY-gan and a lot who assume it's spelled like Ronald Re(a)gan's name and that it's a tribute to him so they pronounce it accordingly.I guess Reegan is the safest way to go about spelling/pronunciation.
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It's a trema, not an umlautThe diacritic that looks like two little two dots are called a trema, not an umlaut. An umlaut is a specific usage of the trema, best known for its use in Germany. A trema mark can also be a diaeresis, which indicates that two letters are to be read separately. "Chloë" would be using a diaeresis. Letters with tremas are also their own letters in some other languages (like in Finnish).

This message was edited 6/24/2011, 11:18 AM

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So when is an umlaut used??
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Here are some audio samplesAudio for German umlauts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTzZn6j0A4YLaconic: an umlaut marks a change in the sound of the original letter.I don't speak German, though -- maybe a speaker here would like to go into detail?Another video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIbVxr6YgB0

This message was edited 6/24/2011, 11:27 AM

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That's very interesting. Thank you. It didn't include the letter "e", so I wonder if umlauts just aren't used for "e" in general.
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That's because German doesn't have an ë. It's not an umlaut.It's used in other languages, though. Wiki is pretty clear on it's usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8B
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Thanks! That clears it up!
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That link says Wiki doesn't have an article about it.
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You have to add a second ) to the URL. Or click on the first suggestion that page gives.
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then google umlaut
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I did. lol. I thought based on what I read that it was used to denote a different pronunciation of the vowel, but someone explained that was wrong so I was asking for clarification.
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