Contents
anusvara ( ̣ )
chandrabindu ( ँ ঁ ઁ ଁ ఁ )
hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ )
horn / dấu móc ( ̛ )
macron ( ¯ )
ogonek / nosinė ( ˛ )
ring / kroužek ( ˚, ˳ )
rough breathing / dasia ( ῾ )
Marks sometimes used as diacritics
apostrophe ( ’ )
bar ( | )
colon ( : )
comma ( , )
hyphen ( ˗ )
tilde ( ~ )
Ä ä
Ǟ ǟ
Ë ë
Ḧ ḧ
Ï ï
Ḯ ḯ
Ö ö
Ȫ ȫ
Ṏ ṏ
T̈ ẗ
Ü ü
Ǖ ǖ
Ǘ ǘ
Ǚ ǚ
Ǜ ǜ
Ṳ ṳ
Ṻ ṻ
Ẅ ẅ
Ẍ ẍ
Ÿ ÿ
An umlaut is the orthographical representation of a type of sound shift in spoken language. A very similar diacritical mark (called diaeresis or "trema") is used to signify a linguistic hiatus. In modern computer systems (using Unicode), umlaut and diaeresis are represented identically: ä represents both a-umlaut and a-trema.
The umlaut is usually a pair of dots or lines ( ¨ ) placed over the letter that represents the affected vowel sound. When that letter is an i, the diacritic replaces the tittle. In German, the umlauts are ä, ö and ü. "Um"+"laut" is German for "around/changed"+"sound". The same name is used in some other languages that share these symbols with German or where the Latin spelling was introduced in the 19th century, replacing marks that had been used previously. The phonological phenomenon of umlaut occurs in English (man ~ men; full ~ fill; goose ~ geese) in a way cognately parallel with German, but English orthography does not write the sound shift using the umlaut diacritic. Instead, a different letter is used.
The diaeresis always comprises a pair of dots and is placed over a vowel (replacing the tittle when appropriate). It indicates that two adjoining letters that would normally form a digraph are actually split over two syllables.[1] To put it simply: the diaeresis indicates that a vowel should be pronounced apart from the letter which precedes it. That preceding letter is usually another vowel, but in Spanish it is used on the letter u when preceded by g and followed by another vowel to indicate that the u should be pronounced. For example, in the spelling coöperate, it reminds the reader that the word has four syllables [koʊˈɔpəɹeɪt], not three [ˈkuːpəɹeɪt]. In English, the trema is rare, and not mandatory, but other languages like Dutch, French and Spanish make regular use of it. By extension, the words trema and diaeresis also designate the same diacritic when used to denote other kinds of sound changes, such as marking the schwa ë in Albanian.
Diaeresis or trema
History
Historically, the diaeresis mark or trema is far older than the umlaut mark.
The word trema is taken from the Byzantine Greek τρημα, meaning "perforation, orifice". This sign was first used in that language[citation needed] to indicate a phonological diaeresis, that is when two consecutive vowels are pronounced separately as a hiatus, rather than together in a diphthong. It is currently used with this purpose in several languages of western and southern Europe, among them Occitan, Modern Greek, Catalan, Dutch, and Welsh.
For example, according to the spelling rules of Catalan, the digraphs ei and iu are normally read as diphthongs, [ei̯] and [iu̯]. To indicate exceptions to this rule, a diaeresis mark is placed on the second vowel: without the trema the words veïna [bəˈinə] ("neighbour", feminine) and diürn [diˈurn] ("diurnal") would be read [ˈbei̯nə] and [ˈdiu̯rn], respectively.
Occitan use of diaeresis is very similar to Catalan: ai, ei, oi, au, eu, ou are diphthongs consisting of one syllable but aï, eï, oï, aü, eü, oü are groups consisting of two distinct syllables.
In French, some pairs of vowels that were originally true diphthongs later coalesced into monophthongs, which led to an extension of the value of this diacritic. It often now indicates that the second vowel is to be pronounced separately from the first, rather than merge with it into a single sound. For example, the French words païen [pajɛ̃], Anaïs [anais], and naïve [naiv] would be pronounced [peɛ̃], [anes], and [nev], respectively, without the diaeresis mark, since the digraph ai is pronounced [e].
Another example is the Dutch spelling coëfficiënt, necessary because the digraphs oe and ie normally represent the simple vowels [u] and [i], respectively.
Ÿ is sometimes used in transcribed Greek, where it represents the Greek letter υ (upsilon) in the non-diphthong αυ (alpha upsilon) (e.g., in the transcription Artaÿctes of the Persian name Ἀρταΰκτης at the very end of Herodotus. Or the name of Mount Taygetus on the southern Peloponnesus peninsula, in modern Greek spelled Ταΰγετος). It also occurs in French as a variant of ï, in rare proper nouns (for instance, the name of the Parisian suburb of L'Haÿ-les-Roses).
In some French words, a diaeresis is used to show what were historically two vowels in hiatus, although the first vowel has since fallen silent. So in "Saint-Saëns", the diaeresis shows that the combination ae is to read like an e; since the a is silent, the words are pronounced as if written "Saint-Sens".
As a further extension, other languages began to use the trema whenever they wish to indicate that a vowel should be pronounced separately from the preceding letter (possibly a consonant), with which it would normally form a digraph, according to the orthographic rules of that language. In the orthographies of Spanish, Catalan, French, Galician and Occitan, the graphemes gu and qu normally represent a single sound, [g] or [k], before the front vowels e and i (before nearly all vowels in Occitan), for historical reasons. In the few exceptions where the u is pronounced before i or e, a trema is added to it. In French, the diaeresis in such cases is usually written over the following vowel.
Examples:
- Spanish - vergüenza (shame), pingüino (penguin)
- Catalan - aigües (waters), qüestió (matter)
- French - Noël (Christmas), aiguë (acute (fem.))
- Occitan - lingüista (linguist), aqüatic (aquatic)
- English - Naïve
- Welsh - trolïau (trolley)
- In Greek it can be used on its own (ακαδημαϊκός, "academic"), or in combination with an acute accent (πρωτεΐνη, "protein").
In English
The diaeresis mark has also been occasionally applied to English words of Latin origin (e.g., coöperate, reënact), as well as native English words, but this usage had become extremely rare by the 1940s. The New Yorker and MIT's Technology Review can be noted as some of the few publications that still spell coöperate (among other words) with a diaeresis.[2][3] Its use in English today, apart from words borrowed from other languages, is mostly limited to certain names, such as the surname Brontë and the given names Chloë and Zoë. It is relatively common in words that do not have an obvious divider at the diaeresis point (the diaeresis cannot be replaced by a preceding hyphen), such as naïve.
Other diacritical uses
- Jacaltec (a Mayan language) and Malagasy are the only languages to allow a pair of dots over the letter "n", presented in unicode as "n̈": indicating in both languages a velar nasal.
- In J. R. R. Tolkien's romanisation of his fictional words (in languages such as Quenya and Sindarin), double dots over trailing e characters (as in Manwë) indicate that the e is pronounced rather than silent, as it would normally be in English. (See Silent E for further information.) On other e it is used to indicate that it does not form a diphthong, e.g. Fëanor. In names beginning with ë the diacritic is moved to the second vowel, like Eärendil.
- The usage of double dots over vowels, particularly ü, also occurs in the transcription of languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, such as Chinese. For example, 女 (female) is transcribed as nü in proper Mandarin Chinese pinyin, while nv is sometimes used as a replacement for convenience since the letter v is not used in pinyin.
- The diaeresis was used in the early Cyrillic alphabet which was used to write Old Church Slavonic. The modern Cyrillic Belarusian and Russian alphabets include the letter yo (Ё, ё), although in modern Russian it is usually printed without the trema (Е, е) unless doing so would create ambiguity. Since the 1870s, the letter yi (Ї, ї) has been used in the Ukrainian alphabet.
- The Cyrillic alphabet letters A, O and U (А, О, У) with trema have been used in the Altay, Mari and Keräşen Tatar alphabets for the sounds ä, ö, ü since the 19th century. The Rusyn alphabet uses both Ё and Ї, as well as ÿ for the "ü" sound. In the Udmurt language, the trema is also used with the consonant letters Zhe (Ж, ж → Ӝ, ӝ) and Ze (З, з → Ӟ, ӟ).
Umlaut
History
Historically, the umlaut mark is far younger than the diaeresis mark, and has unrelated origins, though it has been speculated that an awareness of diaeresis might have influenced the final written form of the umlaut.
Originally, phonological umlaut was denoted in written German by adding an e to the affected vowel, either after the vowel or, in small form, above it. (In medieval German manuscripts, other digraphs could also be written using superscripts: in bluome (“flower”), for example, the <o> was frequently placed above the <u>, although this letter survives now only in Czech. Compare also the development of the tilde as a superscript ‘n’.) In blackletter handwriting as used in German manuscripts of the later Middle Ages, and also in many printed texts of the early modern period, the superscript <e> still had a form which would be recognisable to us as an <e>. However, in the forms of handwriting which emerged in the early modern period (of which Sütterlin is the latest and best known example), the letter <e> had two strong vertical lines, and the superscript <e> looked like two tiny strokes. Gradually these strokes were reduced to dots, and as early as the 16th century we find this handwritten convention being transferred sporadically to printed texts too.