Umlauts and alphabetical order

[davidagbr]

How about Åshild Breie Nyhus, a Norwegian violinist, who turns up last in the alphabet after ZZ Top.

@ gurnemaz... Å is in fact the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet. Therefore, Åshild Breie Nyhus should come after ZZ Top (assuming that you sort by first name).

I'm also assuming that you believe that Å should come directly after A, which is not the case.

Hope that helps,

David

[gurnemanz]

Just reviving this umlaut issue. Vowels with accents are placed illogically at the end of the alphabet, so that, for example, the composer Pärt comes after Purcell. A while ago there was mention of doing something about it.

[davidagbr]

I think a great deal of care is needed with this "issue".

As I have said before, Norwegian has three unique letters that go at the end of the regular latin alphabet (æ, å and ø), and are considered individual letters (ie å has nothing to do with the letter a).

Swedish also has three unique additional letters å, ä and ö, again, these letters appear at the end of the Swedish alphabet, ä and ö should not be confused with the German use of umlauts.

Additional, the original post mentions Arvo Pärt (an Estonian composer). The Estonian alphabet has three vowels with umlauts that although based on the German, are considered letters in their own right and belong at the END of the Estonian alphabet. In gurnemanz's example Pärt is correctly located between Prokofiev and Quink!!

Andrei, I think you need to be very careful before implementing a blanket "fix" on this, as you could end up doing far more harm than good!