Barney & Clyde by Gene Weingarten; Dan Weingarten & David Clark for January 28, 2022

Hammarskjöld’s death was current events to me in Army basic training.

(It’s a diaresis in naïve and in Brontë, but in Hammarskjöld it’s an umlaut.)

Hammarskjold was highly critical of the Russians. It was a sad day when his plane “accidentally” fell out of the sky.

I think it is neither an umlaut nor a diaeresis. In Swedish, “ö” is simply a letter. But if I had to choose between umlaut and diaeresis, I’d pick umlaut. In German, umlauts alter the sound, not the accent. And that’s what happens in Swedish — you get a different sound. The diaeresis changes the accent.

Swedish experts, feel free to correct me.

As for Dag Hammerskjöld, his suspicious death was a loss to all of us.

Motörhead, Motley Crue and Queensryche. We’re there any others?

The only thing worse than a know-it-all kid is a teacher who knows it all.

Diaeresis is what you get with run-ons.

What do you call a clumsy brute in a Buddhist monastery? An om lout.