Nice rabbit hole I am getting into. Checking the collation rules I just learned that in Germany we use different collation methods for dictionaries and for telephone books. Didn’t know telephone books were still a thing, but rules are rules, and in Germany they remain in place forever. Cite in Spanish, cite in German.
Those are the rules DIN 5007 Variant 1, DIN 5007 Variant 2, and DIN 31638 as described in the wikiarticle I just linked to:
The German standard DIN 5007-1 describes sorting under the heading ‘Sorting character strings (ABC rules)’.
DIN 5007 Variant 1 (used for words, e.g. in encyclopaedias; section 6.1.1.4.1)
ä and a are the same
ö and o are the same
ü and u are the same
ß and ss are the same
DIN 5007 variant 2 (special sorting for lists of names, e.g. in telephone directories; section 6.1.1.4.2)
ä and ae are the same
ö and oe are the same
ü and ue are the same
ß and ss are the same
This takes into account the fact that different spellings are possible for proper names, whereas terms in a lexicon or dictionary must be entered under exactly one spelling. On the other hand, it is not possible to determine whether someone’s name is Moeller or Möller. This applies in particular to German-speaking individuals, institutions and place names.
In Germany, personal names are often sorted alphabetically (e.g. in telephone directories) in the following manner:
First, entries are sorted by surname, omitting academic titles such as ‘Prof.’ and ‘Dr.’ and name affixes such as ‘von’, ‘vor’, ‘am’ and “zum”. It should be noted that name affixes can also consist of several words, such as ‘von der Lippe’.
If surnames are identical, any name affixes are then sorted alphabetically, with names without affixes always listed first.
If the name affixes are also identical (or if there are none), the entries are finally sorted alphabetically by first name.
This type of sorting is regulated in the bibliographic classification rules DIN 31638.
I schould have known that Austria can be even weirder than Germany:
The printed Austrian telephone directory uses different sorting methods: in the local directory, umlauts and ß are sorted as separate letters at the end of the alphabet. The information pages (Infoseiten) and Yellow Pages are sorted according to DIN 5007 variant 1. The name directory uses the Austrian sorting method.
In libraries, sch often follows s, i.e. only after sz.
Three different collation methods depending on the type of phone book!
That’s my memory of it. One relic where you can see this is county code numbers for various states, in which the numerical order corresponds to the alphabetical order. Some states have the Mc counties alphabetized as if they were spelled out Mac.
I did not know this fact. Ignorance fought, yet again.
Although…during some extensive research about this building (OK, I opened up its Wiki page), I learned that, during the year of 1992, the light blinked “Capitol 50” in honor of the label’s fiftieth anniversary.
I remember as a music undergrad confusedly scanning the shelves in the music library for the biography of Heinrich Schütz for a while before I finally found it somewhere between Schubert and Schumann.
I fought Discogs because they insist on capitalizing every damn word in a title, including “and” and “the.” What is their beef with title case anyway? Buncha silicon-heads who only know computer code, not English. (That will open up a huge rant if I let it out.)
Which makes the vaunted “Lincoln Bedroom” a Ship of Theseus. The best that can be said for it is that it occupies the same x, y, z coordinates in space. (Does it?)
Apparently Lincoln did use the area as an office, although it was never a bedroom. And it had been an office for 40 years, so it had been used by ten previous presidents.
Another room was designated the Lincoln Bedroom in the 20th century. Truman turned this room into a bedroom and it became a shrine to Lincoln during the White House’s complete renovation after his 1948 election.
I imagine most people still use che. I suppose kids who learned the alphabet after the reforms might be confused by che but I’ve yet to spell something out for someone under fifteen.
When I learned the alphabet in school they included doble erre in it. When reciting the alphabet I would variously say, “erre, doble erre,” or “ere, erre,” or sometimes just “erre.”
It’s weird how as a kid I had a hard time hearing the accent in a word. Knowing where to write the accent mark seemed like sorcery. I remember one of my classmates put an accent on every word, just in case. The teacher was not amused and also probably very amused.