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According to Merriam-Webster, the 'word division dots' for Schrödinger are placed like this: Schrö·ding·er.

However, some sources (mostly older ones), use the spelling Schroedinger, with "oe" instead of "ö". Sometimes this appears in the title of the work, so it probably shouldn't be casually rewritten. Unfortunately, I can't find a dictionary that gives both this version of the surname as well as its word division dots.

Where should the word division dots be for that version of the surname? Is it, perhaps, Schroe·ding·er?

I understand that different dictionaries sometimes give different word division dots for the same word. For example, Merriam-Webster has it as acad·e·my, while American Heritage has it as a·cad·e·my, with one extra breaking point. (In this case, the reason is clear: Merriam-Webster generally doesn't allow word division to leave a single letter at the beginning or the end of the line; see here.) For definiteness, I would like an answer for Schroedinger that is most consistent with the principles (whatever they are) used by Merriam-Webster.

As far as these principles, one thing I know is that the word division dots cannot be deduced from the locations of the phonetic syllables. Considerations that do enter can be complex, as the following example shows:

Poker is an elucidating example of word division. There are two noun entries for the word: one for a metal rod for stirring a fire and one for various card games. The homographs of poker are pronounced the same, as \ˈpō-kər. Yet, for the "rod" entry, the orthographic word division is pok·er, and for the "game" one, the division is po·ker. The reason for this is that the first homograph (the rod) is made up of two parts (or morphemes): the stem poke and the suffix -er. English spelling division rules require words to be divided between different morphemes so we get the division pok·er. However, the second poker (the game) does not have two parts. It consists of one morpheme (it is a modification of the French poque) so it gets divided as po·ker.

Summary

According to whatever principles of placing word division dots are used by Merriam-Webster, where should one place the word division dots in the word Schroedinger (where we have an "oe" instead of "ö")?

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    Isn't the oe one vowel sound and not even a diphthong? So the opening syllable ends after that, as it does after a single o.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 21:52
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    In this case, you really need to divide the word based on syllables, since typically you wouldn't try to decompose proper names into morphemes, particularly morphemes in another language.
    – alphabet
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 21:54
  • @YosefBaskin If this rule for vowels is valid, then it's hard to see why a more general rule wouldn't be valid as well: that one shouldn't put a division dot in the middle of letters that together denote the same phoneme. But the example of com·​mit·​tee seems to invalidate that more general rule. So then the question becomes, why should the rule hold for vowels but not for consonants?
    – linguisticturn
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 22:18
  • @alphabet This is indeed consistent with the poker (the game) example: absent multiple morphemes, it is divided according to the positions of its phonetic syllables.
    – linguisticturn
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 22:20
  • @linguisticturn: even though the "tt" in "committee" is pronounced as one phonetic consonant in present-day English, it is possible to interpret it historically or abstractly as representing a geminate consonant /tt/ which is split between two syllables as /t.t/. There is no comparable principle of splitting diphthongs between syllables--much less digraphs representing a monophthongal vowel.
    – herisson
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 23:59

2 Answers 2

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The division Schrö·ding·er would most naturally suggest Schroe·ding·er. I can think of no reason to divide Schroedinger as Schro-edinger. I find it a little curious that the question even comes up. For comparison, Merriam-Webster dives Goethe, another German name that is pronounced in German with the same vowel (/øː/), as "Goe·​the".

To address a broader question raised in the comments: it's true that word division dots do not correspond exactly to syllable divisions in pronunciation, as given by most modern accounts of English syllabification. But it goes too far to conclude on that basis that word division has nothing to do with syllabification. The underlying reason for the discrepancy is that theories of syllabification are contentious (one school of thought denies that syllables even exist except as a theoretical construct) and in addition, syllabification can change over time. Many styles of word division take historical or morphological information into account, but some concept of the syllable, however defined, still tends to be of use in explaining the placement of divisions.

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  • I now agree that the examples like Goe·the and Goe·ring are indeed decisive. It may also help to consider that go·nad shows that no general principle prohibits go from being on its own at the beginning of a word, while co·erce shows that no general principle prevents a break between o and er. Thus, the best guess why Go·ering is unacceptable would indeed seem to be that we shouldn't separate o from e when that oe stands for ö.
    – linguisticturn
    Commented Apr 27, 2023 at 14:52
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    @linguisticturn the "o" and "e" in coerce are pronounced as two separate vowels. The "o" and "e" in Schroedinger are only one vowel, that just happens to be written with two letters. Similarly, just because reanimate can be broken between "e" and "a" doesn't mean you can break up overreach between its "e" and "a".
    – The Photon
    Commented Apr 27, 2023 at 15:16
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    @linguisticturn: I think you could broaden that a bit to say that o and e shouldn't be separated when they are understood as together representing a single vowel sound. That occurs not only in words that originally had "ö", but also in cases like on·​o·​mato·​poe·​ia and amoe·​ba, and would apply also in shoeing and canoeing. More broadly still, any sequence of vowel letters understood as together representing a single vowel sound will generally not be separated
    – herisson
    Commented Apr 28, 2023 at 7:30
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Using "oe" instead of "ö" is a widely used way to represent ö when your typewriter (or a type font) doesn't contain the ö character. It doesn't change how the name is meant to be pronounced, so it doesn't change where the syllables or morphemes begin and end, and so it doesn't change where you can or can't hyphenate the word.

Is it, perhaps, Schroe·ding·er?

Yes.

Merriam-Webster has it as acad·e·my, while American Heritage has it as a·cad·e·my, with one extra breaking point.

Merriam Webster is showing where you would be allowed to hyphenate the word and split it between lines. For that purpose you shouldn't leave a single letter on either line.

American Heritage is showing you where the syllable divisions are in the word, which is arguably more helpful if you're looking up a word you saw in print and you want to know how to pronounce it.

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    Not so. Spelling matters. For example, you can spell it either counselor or counsellor, but the word division dots get placed rather differently in the two cases: coun·sel·or and coun·sel·lor.
    – linguisticturn
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 22:34
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    Also, I disagree about American Heritage. True, they don't use the term 'word division dots'. Nevertheless, just like Merriam-Webster, they distinguish between the division according to pronunciation and the division in writing: As they write here:
    – linguisticturn
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 22:38
  • Sometimes the syllabication of the pronunciation differs from the syllabication of the entry word because the division of the pronunciation follows phonological rules, while the division of the entry word reflects the established practice of printers and editors in breaking words at the end of a line for ease of reading. Surely, this is the same distinction as in M-W.
    – linguisticturn
    Commented Apr 26, 2023 at 22:39

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