OK, the Æ thread prompted me to post a question I’ve been mulling for a while now.
Keep in mind, I know virtually nothing about the Spanish language. But I was wondering how you’re supposed to use the Tilde ( ~ ) in typical typing? I always thought it was used as an accent mark over letters, kind of like an umlaut. If thats correct, why do we have one that is it’s own character. Not, logic tells me that one of two things must be true. A) The common keyboard is even dumber than previously thought, or B) I’m a complete rube and shouldn’t be given access to such technology.
Please tell me what this little bastard is for lest I continue using it as a flourished dash-mark inappropriately.
It’s also used as a replacement for the approximatly equals symbol (which is a wavy equals sign)
So 4.99 is ~5
And, as I recall, it is a symbol in spanish as well, though usually it is put over a letter, some text editors auto replace ~n for the n with tilde directly over it.
Oh, yeah. I should have mentioned that being a engineering grad and a developer/programmer I actually do know of the many common uses of it. I should clarify that the question is more in reference to the lingustic uses.
I’m operating under the presumption that all the the common web and computer language uses are more a result of it’s inclusion on a keyboard, rather than the reason for it. I’d be glad to conceed this is wrong if it does indeed not have a lingustic use after all.
So, the question remains…and maybe this should have been put in GQ… but how would you use it in type if you were (presumably) using Spanish?
It’s used in Spanish to differentiate the letter “n” (pronouced “EN-eh”) from the letter “ñ” (pronouced “EN-yeh”). The pronunciation distinction is the same in Spanish words - words like jalapeño and español are written with the tilde, while necesario and enunciar are written (and pronounced) without it.
Could it be that it’s on the keyboard because it used to be on typewriters where it was easier to back up a bit and then type it over another character? And then the standalone uses arose.
Worth pointing out that in addition to Spanish ñ there are also several Portuguese vowels that take the tilde to indicate nasalization: Joao with tilde over the a (and I refuse to try to figure out how to get Verdana to represent that on this board) is pronounced roughly Jhon-o (yes, the h is where it belongs, it’s a very soft J sound, like the s in pleasure).
The tilde by itself represents:
[ul][li]“Approximately,” when followed by a numerical quantity[/li][li]"(Matter omitted)" in older texts and occasionally still today. Jonathan Edwards, the Great Enlightmenment preacher, would probably have signed his name quickly as Jno~ Edwards. Note the signature of tomndebb: Tom~[/li]In symbolic logic, it represents a “not” operator.[/ul]
That’s also how it’s used in written Portuguese: the name João is pronounced with a nasalized vowel, sort of like the French word “joint,” if I have that correctly.
It’s also used that way in several other languages.
Amusingly, in archaic English typesetting it used to be used to show that the vowel was followed by n; mãfullie for “manfully,” for example.
This is the kind of answer I was looking for. Sounds reasonable enough, and short of Cecil’s confirmation, I’ll take this as a granite-solid fact.
I guess my assumption that it is used above letters was correct, and short of programming shorthand and various typographical, it doesn’t have much use in composition as it exists now.
In typed text (on a message board, for example), I use it to mean ‘approximately’; “I can eat ~50 eggs”.
Surprised nobody has mentioned its use in Linux (not sure if it is just bash or if it’s universal) - it represents the currently logged user’s home directory, so cd /home/mangetout is the same as cd ~
Apropos Mange’s last example, can I take this opportunity to ask about something? Often when I see an URL to a personal website, it’ll be something like “http:\www.corporateISPsite.com\homepages~fredr7\index.htm” – why the tilde before fredr7’s name?
My WAG is that it tells the server to skip to the user’s public_html directory. In my experience, on big ISP sites like that, the user’s webspace contains other directories for email and such, and their actual web page is in public_html.
It’s often used internally to link to a specific user’s web directory on their account. The first part of the URL is the domain, as you’ve identified, like:
Then the next piece is typically an internal path name to a specific directory and file. In the case of a multi-user environment, that ~username part is an alias to the user’s directories, and usually a certain “starting” directory inside, not just to their home directory.
For example, at my university, ~smith would like to ~smith/public_html, (where “~smith” in the unix file system indicates Joe Smith’s home directory (called “smith”).
