One Big Happy by Rick Detorie for January 23, 2024

Did you know that the French pronounce Jose as “joe-say”? (I learned that when my opera group performed CARMEN.)

Ruth a?

Rúthie.

(The letter Ú/ú is part of the Icelandic alphabet. The name of the letter, as well as the sound it makes, is like the U in “Ruthie”).

Well, given with my name in French you add a “yes” to it to sound correctly My German family name/last name contains an umlaut, and no matter how much I tell people it is not spelled correctly without those two dots, every mail I get is without them. So I told one poor receptionist if she does not spell my name correctly, I will never pay the bill since it was not billed correctly—she stared at the keyboard wondering where the umlaut O was!

Doesn’t change the sound in Spanish, it puts the emphasis on the “e.” Without it the word would be HO say instead of ho SAY.

an acute accent…as opposed to an ugly one?

Maybe you could dot your I with a little heart.☺️

Ruth-ay would sound pretentious

Yep, that’s how it starts. When I was a school secretary it was all the rage and they would get so upset because our software didn’t recognize accents.

Ruthé