Steve Loft wrote in message ...

:Colin Youngs wrote:
: "Föhn" should be pronounced roughly like "fern".
:
:Correct me if I'm wrong, Colin, but if people are going to complain
:about how the word "Föhn" is pronounced, they should spell it correctly,
:as you have. If you can't or don't want to use an umlaut, then you
:should spell it "Foehn".

Strictly speaking, I suppose so. However, it always looks a bit odd to me
when, for example, a UK newspaper spells Düsseldorf as Duesseldorf. It
distorts the appearance of a word we are familiar with.

My keyboard is equipped for French and German so I use the accents or umlaut
when typing words or place names in those languages. I don't know if they
always show up correctly on other posters' PCs. I have no Spanish tilde
and so cannot type something like "el niño" directly. In that situation, I
look the word up on a website and copy-and-paste it from there.

Colin Youngs
Brussels