emergency grammar question!

May 17, 2023 2:34 PM

I don't seem to be able to sort this out; In a document I'm editing, the author writes: "Coeliac disease with the oe ligature is the spelling used in Britain, much of Europe and many countries in Africa and Asia." I'm not sure that IS ligature? Is the "oe" in coeliac maybe a digraph? (Internet definition: a digraph is a combination of two letters representing one sound, as in ph and ey.)
posted by Jody Tresidder to Writing & Language (16 answers total)

They're referring to œ, presumably, rather than oe.

(So you'd want to figure out of Brits use cœliac or coeliac, at least, and then proceed from there.)
posted by sagc at 2:38 PM on May 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

We Brits use the oe diphthong but using a ligature is archaic
posted by boudicca at 2:42 PM on May 17, 2023 [7 favorites]

If they were referring to œ, it would be a ligature.

This is a difference between modern American and modern British English spelling. It was once common to keep the ligature in this type of word, and as it stopped being used modern British English generally began using "oe" while modern American English substituted just "e". Here's some history.
posted by earth by april at 2:47 PM on May 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: From your brilliant link, earth by april: In Latin and English, oe and ae are pronounced as a single sound (which sound is another matter, and can vary from case to case), rather than as two vowel syllables or as diphthongs, i.e. a combined vowel sound. (Still, because they're written as two vowels, many people refer to them as diphthongs--but they should be calling them digraphs instead.)

sagc: we are definitely talking about coeliac (with o and e typed separately, not smashed together), and the British pronunciation is: see-lee-ak)

The American pronunciation (of the British English coeliac, with o and e) is kow-lee-ak

Which is why I'm shakily leaning towards "digraph"?
posted by Jody Tresidder at 3:04 PM on May 17, 2023

Response by poster: Or maybe "vowel team" is more accurate?

(A vowel team is when you have two vowels that work together to make one sound. Think about words like rain, play, boil, sound, and goat).

I don't appear to be thinking very well!
posted by Jody Tresidder at 3:12 PM on May 17, 2023

American English pronounces this the same as British English. See-lee-ak. I've never heard anyone, even people with the disease, pronounce it ko-lee-ak. We just don't use the "Coeliac" spelling. See also "anaemia", "oedema", etc.

I agree with diagraph, but I am only a grammar dork and not a technical editor or a linguist.
posted by fiercekitten at 3:35 PM on May 17, 2023 [15 favorites]

(For what it's worth, "vowel team" seems like a less intimidating equivalent for "digraph made up of vowel letters." I'd use whichever one suits your audience better.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:03 PM on May 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Wikipedia's page on œ calls it both a grapheme and a ligature.

In typography a ligature tends to mean a linking of two letters for aesthetic purposes. I like grapheme.
posted by zadcat at 4:11 PM on May 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Can you rewrite it a bit?

Celiac disease (which is spelled as Coeliac in Britain, much of Europe, and many countries in Africa and Asia) ...
posted by hydra77 at 4:22 PM on May 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

You might avoid the term "vowel team." It appears to be part of the "Phonics" program for teaching young children to read, but is not a part of formal grammar.
posted by dum spiro spero at 4:27 PM on May 17, 2023 [10 favorites]

FWIW, when I took History of English back in college, the prof referred to the glyph Æ as the "A-E digraph." And that was a letter used in Old English, which we call "ash" (now that I think about it, I'm not sure why he didn't call it "ash.") Œ was not native to English, but orthographically, I think that's also a digraph.
posted by adamrice at 5:25 PM on May 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You don't really give us the context or audience of this document, but assuming it is more towards a medical or general audience, they are not going to want to be caught up in extraneous information about whether it is a ligature or digraph or vowel team etc etc etc. That sort of thing is really just confusing and a distraction from the central point, which can be made via a phrasing like this:

The term coeliac disease, with the oe spelling, is used in Britain, much of Europe and many countries in Africa and Asia.

On the other hand, if it is aimed more towards an audience that knows and cares about the nuances of grammar, spelling, typography, historical usage, etc etc, then maybe something like this:

The term coeliac disease, written in modern times with oe and more traditionally with the œ ligature (which is related to the Runic letter odal or othala: ᛟ), is used in Britain, much of Europe and many countries in Africa and Asia.

Exactly what detail info you want to give is up to you (and/or the author) of course, but the point is you can lean into the technical details a bit if relevant to the audience, and avoid them entirely if not.
posted by flug at 6:01 PM on May 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: The American pronunciation (of the British English coeliac, with o and e) is kow-lee-ak

Just nthing that this is untrue (both in personal experience and according to every dictionary I've checked).

As to phrasing, I agree with flug - there's no need to mention technical terms for "oe" unless the focus of the text is linguistics. It's just a distraction otherwise.
posted by trig at 6:38 PM on May 17, 2023 [8 favorites]

Digraph refers to the phonetics/sounds.

Ligature is a typography term. Many digraphs are printed as ligatures.
posted by amtho at 8:45 PM on May 17, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: The thing about ligatures is they crop up in many fonts and are not spelling-impacting - for instance, lowercase fi, ff and ffi are often a single merged glyph in the font, and that glyph represents a ligature where the letters are so changed that you don't get the same shape by using the individual letters; but they are still three letters, and you're looking at a formatting nicety. Other less common ligatures I've seen in computer fonts are st and ct.

Œ is a single letter when it's written like that; it's a variant spelling, not a typographical nicety. See also œuvre, manœuvre, which are (I would argue) not the same spelling as oeuvre or manoeuvre, even if those latter spellings exist because of a typographical convenience.

As such I would go with grapheme - not dipthong (which is whether it's a sliding vowel sound, but nothing to do with the spelling at all - and this is not a sliding vowel sound) or a digraph (which is the use of two letters to represent a single sound, like ph, th, ch and others as well as various vowel combos).

annoyingly, I am trying to think of a good dipthong and my brain keeps settling on 'radio', which is not a dipthong, but a much rarer tripthong (spelled with two letters, because English is weird). So now you know.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 10:09 PM on May 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for the brilliant, generous answers and links.

Totally agree there is no need for the author's weird wobble into linguistic matters, that it's a fussy distraction, and definitely of very little relevance to the intended readers.

(I just couldn't see that myself! These answers are a huge help.)

I've learned a ton from this thread I'm incredibly grateful.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 10:40 AM on May 18, 2023