By This Umlaut Ye Shall Conquer

Apparently Queen Elizabeth II of England is arriving in Canada on June 28.

No doubt she read my January, "Queen of (Seal) Hearts" blog, and is trying to reëstablish her sovereignty. Personally I think it is too little, too late. However we do need to tread carefully here. We don't want the Brits to get cranky with us because there is nothing they like better than a good invasion now and then. That's when they get all lean and noble like Alec Guinness or David Niven say things to each other like, "Damn those colonials all to hell, old chap." Which is very intimidating.

Michaëlle Jean's tenure as Governor General ends in September. Rumours are aswirl that Elizabeth II may appoint a new GG while she is here. We need to politely decline the English Queen's appointment and get on with our future as a constitutional monarchy with our own monarch.

In my January blog I presented all of the reasons why Michaëlle Jean should replace Elizabeth II and become our Queen, i.e., the wardrobe, the contacts, the goofy husband, the daughter, etc., but not being aware of it at the time, I unwittingly left out the key argument, which is of course - her umlaut! How regal is that? I spotted in on the official GG website this week. Very impressive. Definitely a sign from heaven that this was meant to be, sort of like Constantine's, " in this sign ye shall conquer".

So here's the thing. We need to coördinate and double our efforts. We must continue our letter writing campaign to every MP and MPP, except maybe Helena Guergis. Letters are important and they work, they really do, but we need something even more powerful to muster the troops.

Think umlaut, my friends. As a show of solidarity with our future queen, I think Canadians should revert to using the umlaut which evidently hasn't been seen here since the 1940s. It disappeared about the same time as the last timber rattle snake was seen in Niagara.

It is very easy to figure out when to use one. Whenever two vowels that are usually a digraph, (i.e., make one sound, example: ea makes the ee sound), but are not a digraph because each vowel makes a different sound, the umlaut goes over the second vowel. For example cooperation which to a new reader of English probably looks like it must be a type of chicken farm, would be spelled coöperation.


It is a little more difficult figuring out how to get them. You need to go to accessories, then system tools, then use the character map.  Unfortunately there is a lot of cutting and pasting and I haven't figured out how to get the font right yet - but the cause is just!


Time is short and there is much to be done. To arms!

Oops...I mean:

To Umlauts, Canada!