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Diacritic
*** Shopping-Tip: Diacritic
{{Diacritical marks}}
A '''diacritical mark''' or '''diacritic''', sometimes called an '''accent mark''', is a
mark added to a
letter (alphabet) letter to alter a
word's pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The word derives from the
Greek language Greek word διακÏ?ιτικός (diakratikos, ''distinguishing''). Note that ''diacritic'' is a noun and ''diacritical'' is the corresponding adjective.
A diacritical mark can appear above or below the letter to which it is added, or in some other position; however, note that not all such marks are diacritical. For example, in
English language English, the
tittle (dot) on the letters ''i'' and ''j'' is not a diacritical mark, but rather part of the letter itself. Further, a mark may be diacritical in one language, but not in another; for example, in
Catalan language Catalan,
Portuguese language Portuguese or
Spanish language Spanish, ''u'' and ''ü'' are considered the same letter, while in
German language German,
Estonian language Estonian,
Hungarian language Hungarian,
Turkish language Turkish or
Azeri language Azeri they are considered to be separate letters.
The main usage of a diacritic is to change the phonetic meaning of the letter, but the term is also used in a more general sense of changing the meaning of the letter or even the whole word. Examples are writing numerals in
numeral systems, such as early
Greek numerals and marking abbreviations with the
titlo in old
Slavic languages Slavic texts.
Types of diacritic
*
Dot (diacritic) dot
* (''' Ë™ ''') ''
anunaasika'' superdot
* (''' . ''') ''
anusvaara'' subdot, used in
Sanskrit
* (''' ¸ ''') ''
cedilla''
* (''' Ë› ''') ''
ogonek'' or "Polish hook"
* (''' ° ''') ''
kroužek'' or
ring (diacritic) ring; unlike in
Czech language Czech, in the
Scandinavian languages this is not considered a diacritic but an integral part of the character ''Ã¥''.
* (''' ˘ ''')
breve; part of the character when used in
Esperanto
* (''' ˇ ''')
caron or ''
háÄ?ek'' ("little hook" in Czech). In Slovak it is called ''mäkÄ?eň'' ("softener" or "palatalization mark"), in Slovenian ''streÅ¡ica'' ("little roof"), in Croatian ''kvaÄ?ica'' ("little hook").
* (''' ^ ''')
circumflex, part of the character when used in
Esperanto, also in Slovak is used on "o" and it is called ''vokáň''
* (''' ¯ ''')
macron
* (''' ¨ ''')
diaeresis (also dieresis) or
umlaut, a diacritic in some languages (such as
German language German), but part of the character in the
Swedish language Swedish and
Russian languages.
* accent
** (''' ` ''')
grave accent
** (''' ´ ''')
acute accent
** (''' Ë? ''')
double acute accent
* (''' {{polytonic | ̔}} ''') ''
spiritus asper'' or rough breathing mark
* (''' {{polytonic | ̓}} ''') ''
spiritus lenis'' or smooth (or soft) breathing mark
*
hook (diacritic) hook (dấu h�i), as used in
Vietnamese language Vietnamese
Marks that are sometimes diacritics, but also have other uses, are:
* (''' | ''')
bar (diacritic) bar through the basic letter
* (''' , ''')
comma (punctuation) comma
* (''' ~ ''')
tilde
* ( {{unicode|҃}} )
titlo, used to indicate abbreviation in the
early Cyrillic alphabet
* (''' ' ''')
apostrophe (punctuation) apostrophe
* (''' : ''')
colon (punctuation) colon, used to attach native affixes (such as
declension case markers) to foreign words and abbreviations
* (''' - ''')
hyphen - in English, hyphens can be used to break words between syllables, to resolve ambiguities in pronunciation:
** repair (fix) compared to re-pair (pair again).
** Kuringgai becomes Ku-ring-gai.
Diacritic usage
*
Catalan language Catalan has grave, acute, cedilla and diaeresis.
* Several
Chinese language Chinese romanizations use umlaut, but only on ''u'' (''ü''). In
Hanyu Pinyin, the four
Tone (linguistics) tones of
Mandarin Chinese are denoted by the macron, acute, caron and grave diacritics.
*
Czech language Czech has acute, caron and ring.
*
Dutch language Dutch uses diaeresis. For example in ''ruïne'' it means that the u and i are separately pronounced in their usual way, and not in the way that the combination ui is normally pronounced. Thus it works as a separation sign and not as an indication for an alternative version of the i. Diacritics can be used for emphasis (''érg koud'' for ''very'' cold) or for disambiguation between the numeral one (''één appel'', one apple) and the indefinite article (''een appel'', an apple). Grave and acute accents are used on a very small number of words, mostly loanwords.
* In
Estonian language Estonian, carons in ''š'' or ''ž'' may appear only in foreign proper names and
loanwords, but may be also substituted with ''sh'' or ''zh'' in some texts. Apostrophe can be used in declension of some foreign names to separate the stem from any
declension endings; e.g., ''Monet' '' or ''Monet'sse'' for the
genitive case and
illative case, respectively, for (the famous painter) "Monet".
*
French language French uses grave, acute, circumflex, cedilla and diaeresis. However, not all diacritics occur on all vowels in French:
** Acute (''accent aigu'') only occurs on ''e'' (''é'', pronounced /e/)
** Grave (''accent grave'') occurs on ''e'' (''è'', pronounced /ε/), ''a'' (''à ''), and ''u'' (''ù'')
** Circumflex (''accent circonflexe'') occurs on all vowels: ''e'' (''ê'', pronounced /ε/), ''a'' (''â'', pronounced /α/), ''i'' (''î''), ''o'' (''ô'', pronounced /o/), and ''u'' (''û''; if occurring in the combination ''eû'', pronounced /ø/)
** Cedilla (''cédille'') is used only under the ''c'' (''ç'', pronounced /s/). It is used in cases in which a ''c'' is soft before ''a'', ''o'', or ''u'', such as ''ça'' (pronounced /sa/, not /ka/).
** Diaeresis (''tréma'') occurs on ''e'' (''ë''), ''i'' (''ï''), ''u'' (''ü''), and ''y'' (''ÿ''). The diaeresis only occurs on ''y'' in a few proper nouns, including ''Louÿs'' and ''
L'Haÿ-les-Roses''. The mark's function is to indicate that the vowel is pronounced separately from the one just before it.
** Diacritics are sometimes omitted from
majuscule capitalized letters, especially in France.
** Not all French diacritics affect pronunciation. However, all cases in which they do have been noted in the foregoing.
*
Finnish language Finnish uses a colon to decline loanwords and abbreviations; e.g., ''USA:han'' for the illative case of "USA". Also characters ''ä'' and ''ö'' are part of the Finnish alphabet (''a'' and ''o'' with ''Umlaut'').
*
German language German has the ''Umlaut'' (¨). This can be used over ''a'', ''o'', or ''u'' to indicate vowel modification. For instance: ''Ofen'' (/'o:fən/); ''Öfen'' (/'ø:fən/), which in this case makes the difference between singular and plural (“oven�/“ovens�). The sign originated in a superscript ''e''; a handwritten
Sütterlin ''e'' resembles two parallel vertical lines, like an umlaut.
*
Hawaiian language Hawaiian has
kahakos (macrons) and
okinas ({{unicode|ʻ}}); often rendered as (‘).
*
Irish language Irish uses acute accent to indicate that the vowel is
vowel length long. It is known as ''sÃneadh fada'' in Irish.
*
Italian language Italian uses acute and grave to indicate irregular stress patterns (as in ''più'', which would otherwise be stressed on the ''i'') and to distinguish words that would otherwise be
homographs (such as ''te'' ["you"] and ''tè'' ["tea"]). In many words, acute and grave are interchangeable.
* Romanized
Japanese language Japanese (
Romaji) uses diacritics to mark long vowels. The
Hepburn romanization system uses a
macron to mark
long vowels, and the
Kunrei-shiki and
Nihon-shiki systems use a
circumflex.
*
Lithuanian language Lithuanian uses the
acute,
grave and
tilde in dictionaries to indicate stress types in the language's
pitch stress system. In general usage, where letters appear with the
caron (''Ä?, Å¡'' and ''ž'') they are considered as separate letters from ''c, s'' or ''z'' and collated separately; letters with the
ogonek (''ą, ę, į'' and ''ų''), the
macron (''Å«'') and the
anunaasika superdot (''Ä—'') are considered as separate letters as well, but not given a unique collation order.
*
Portuguese language Portuguese uses acute (to mark stressed vowels), grave (to mark the assimilation of two identical vowels into one, now used only on A), circumflex (marks both the stress and the roundness, being deprecated in this second use), cedilla (to mark the pronunciation of C as /s/ instead of /k/ before A, O and U and tilde (to mark the nasalisation of A and O). In
Brazil diaeresis is also used to differ the pronunciation of groups like ''qüe'', and ''güi'' (respetively /kwe/ and /gwi/) from ''que'' and ''gui'' (/ke/ and /gi/).
* Many
Slavic languages Slavic and
Baltic languages Baltic languages use caron to signify either
palatalisation or
iotation.
* Many Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet have
ogonek and
bar (diacritic) bar.
*
Slovak language Slovak has acute, caron, circumflex (only above ''o'') and diaresis (only above ''a'').
*
Spanish language Spanish uses acute, diaeresis and tilde. Acute is used on a vowel in a stressed syllable in words with irregular stress patterns. It can also be used to "break" a
diphthong as in ''tÃo'' (pronounced /'tio/, and not /tjo/ as it would be without the accent). Moreover, the acute can be used to distinguish words that otherwise are spelt alike, such as ''mas'' ( = "but"} and ''más'' ( = "more"), and also to distinguish interrogative and relative words otherwise spelt alike, such as ''donde/¿dónde?'' ( = "where") or ''como/¿cómo?'' ( = "as"/"how?"). Tilde is used on ''n'', forming
Ñ a separate letter (''ñ'') in the Spanish alphabet. Diaeresis is used only over u (ü) so that it is pronounced /w/ in the combinations ''gue'' and ''gui'' (where ''u'' is normally silent), for example ''ambigüedad''. In poetry, diaeresis may be used on ''i'' and ''u'' as a way to force
Hiatus (linguistics) hiatus.
*
Tagalog language Tagalog uses a hyphen after a consonant to indicate a syllable break (''nag-alis'' /nag·a·lÃs/ as opposed to ''nagalis'' /na·ga·lÃs/). A hyphen is not necessary between two vowels, vowels being distinctly pronounced in Tagalog (''tauhan'' /ta·ú·han/, ''buo'' /bu·ô/).
*
Tamil language Tamil does not have any diacritics in itself, but uses the
Arabic numerals Western numerals 2, 3 and 4 as diacritics to represent aspirated, voiced, and voiced-aspirated consonants when the
Tamil script is used to write to long passages in Sanskrit.
*
Vietnamese language Vietnamese uses acute (dấu sắc), grave (dấu huy�n), tilde (dấu ngã), dot below (dấu nặng) and hook (dấu h�i) on vowels as
Tone (linguistics) tone indicators.
*
Welsh language Welsh uses the circumflex, diaeresis, acute and grave accents on its seven vowels ''a, e, i, o, u, w, y''. The most common is the circumflex (which it calls ''to bach'', meaning "little roof") to denote a long vowel, usually to disambiguate it from a similar word with a short vowel. The rarer grave accent has the opposite effect, shortening vowel sounds which would usually be pronounced long. The acute accent and diaeresis are also occasionally used, to denote stress and vowel separation respectively. The w-circumflex and y-circumflex are among the most common accented characters in Welsh, but unusual in languages generally, and were until recently very hard to obtain in word-processed and HTML documents.
* Modern
English language English does not usually have diacritics, which appear only in foreign and loanwords. The letter '''è''' is an exception, used to modify the pronunciation of words ending in -ed within poetry and songs, though this is considered, by some, to be archaic. Occasionally, especially in older literature, and notably in
The New Yorker's
house style, the diaeresis is used (as in Dutch) to indicate a syllable break. For instance, in "coördinate" it indicates that the second "o" starts a new syllable.
Non-diacritic usage
*
Esperanto language Esperanto has a separate letter which is a ''u'' with a
breve over it, and letters which are ''c'', ''g'', ''h'', ''j'' and ''s'' with the
circumflex over them. These are not diacritic marks, but necessary parts of entirely separate letters.
*
Estonian language Estonian has a distinct letter ''õ'' which contains a non-diacritical tilde. Estonian "dotted vowels" ''ä'', ''ö'', ''ü'' are similar to German, but these are also distinct letters, not containing umlauts. All these four letters have their own place in the alphabet (between ''w'' and ''x'').
*
Faroese language Faroese and
Icelandic (language) Icelandic use acute accents, digraphs, and other special letters. All are considered separate letters, and have their own place in the alphabet:
** Faroese: ''á'', ''ð'', ''Ã'', ''ó'', ''ú'', ''ý'', ''æ'' and ''ø''
** Icelandic: ''á'', ''ð'', ''é'', ''Ã'', ''ó'', ''ú'', ''ý'', ''æ'', ''ö'' and ''þ''
*
Finnish language Finnish uses dotted vowels (''ä'' and ''ö'') similar to in Swedish, and ''å'', ''š'' and ''ž'' in foreign names and loanwords; they are considered distinct letters and collate after ''z''.
*
Hungarian language Hungarian uses the acute and double acute accent (unique to Hungarian): ''áéÃóú'' and ''őű''. The diacritic marks over the letters ''ö'' and ''ü'' are not
umlauts. The acute accent indicates the long form of a vowel, while the double acute performs the same function for ''ö'' and ''ü''. Both long and short forms of the vowels are listed separately in the
Hungarian alphabet.
*
Maltese language Maltese uses a C, G, and Z with a dot over them (ÄŠ, Ä , Å»), and also has a H with an extra horizontal bar. For upper case H, the extra bar is written slightly above the usual bar. For lower case H, the extra bar is written crossing the vertical, like a ''t'', and not touching the lower part (Ħ, ħ). The above letters are considered separate letters, not dicritics. Maltese sometimes uses diacritics on some vowels to indicate stress or long vowels, however this usage is restricted to pronunciation assistance in dictionaries. The letter 'c' without a dot has fallen out of use due to redundancy. 'Ä‹' is pronounced like the English 'ch' and 'k' is used as a hard c as in 'cat'. The Maltese Z is pronounced like a 'ts' (Zokkor (sugar) is pronounced 'tsoh-kor') while 'ż' is closer to the English 'z' as in 'żarbun (shoe), pronounced 'zahr-boon'. 'G' is a hard 'g' sound, pronounced like the 'g' in the English word 'sugar' while 'Ä¡' is a soft 'g' as in 'Ä¡obon' (cheese), pronounced 'job-ohn'.
*
Romanian language Romanian uses a breve on the letter ''a'' ('''ă''') to indicate the sound
schwa (/É™/), as well as a circumflex over the letters ''a'' ('''â''') and ''i'' ('''î''') for the sound /{{unicode|ɨ}}/. Romanian also writes a
comma below the letters ''s'' ('''{{polytonic|ș}}''') and ''t'' ('''{{polytonic|ț}}''') to represent the sounds /{{unicode|ʃ}}/ and /{{unicode|ʦ}}/, respectively.
* Among the
Scandinavian languages,
Danish language Danish and
Norwegian language Norwegian have long used
Æ ash (''æ'', actually a ligature) and
Ø o-slash (''ø''), but have more recently incorporated a-ring (''å'') after Swedish example. Historically the ''å'' has developed from a ligature by writing a small a on top of the letter a; if an ''å'' character is unavailable, some Scandinavian languages allow the substitution of a doubled ''a''. The Scandinavian languages collate these letters after z, but have different
collation standards. In
Swedish language Swedish, the order å, ä, ö is used, while
Danish language Danish and
Norwegian language Norwegian follow the order æ, ø, å instead.
*
Swedish language Swedish uses characters identical to a-diaeresis (''ä'') and o-diaeresis (''ö'') in the place of ash and o-slash in addition to the a-circle (''å''). Historically the diaresis for the Swedish letters ''ä'' and ''ö'', like the German umlaut, has developed from a small gothic ''e'' written on top of the letters.
*
Turkish language Turkish uses a ''G'' with a breve (''
Äž''), two letters with a diaeresis (''
Ö'' and ''
Ü'', representing two rounded front vowels), two letters with a cedilla (''
Ç'' and ''
S-cedilla Åž'', representing the affricates
/tʃ/ and
/ʃ/), and also possesses a dotted capital ''
I-dot İ'' (and a dotless lowercase ''ı'' representing a high unrounded back vowel). In Turkish each of these are separate letters, rather than versions of other letters, where dotted capital ''İ'' and lower case ''i'' are the same letter, as are dotless capital ''I'' and lowercase ''ı''.
Typeface Typographically, ''Ç'' and ''Åž'' are often rendered with a subdot, as in ''{{unicode|Ṣ}}''; when a hook is used, it tends to have more a comma shape than the usual cedilla. See also
Turkish alphabet.
*
Vietnamese language Vietnamese uses the
horn (diacritic) horn for the letters Æ¡ and Æ°;
circumflex for the letters â, ê, and ô;
breve for the letter ă; and a bar through the letter đ. See
Vietnamese alphabet for their collation order.
In all these cases they are not seen as additional marks over the vowel, but are actually a necessary part of these characters, as they represent entirely different sounds to the basic forms.
*
Cyrillic alphabets
**
Belarusian language Belarusian has a letter ''
U short Ñž''.
**
Russian language Russian has the letter ''
Yo (Cyrillic) Ñ‘'', usually replaced in print by ''
E (Cyrillic) е'', although it has a different pronunciation. ''Ð?'' is still used in children's books and in handwriting. A
minimal pair is ''вÑ?е'' (''vse'', "all" pl.) and ''вÑ?Ñ‘'' (''vsio'', "everything" n. sg.).
** Bulgarian, Russian and
Ukrainian language Ukrainian have the letter ''
Short I й''.
** Ukrainian also has the letter ''
Yi (Cyrillic) ï''.
** Acute accents are also used in
Slavic language dictionaries and textbooks to indicate
lexical stress, placed over the vowel of the stressed syllable. This can also serve to disambiguate meaning (e.g., in Russian ''пиÑ?а́Ñ‚ÑŒ'' (''pisát'') means "to write", but ''пи́Ñ?ать'' (''pÃsat'') means "to piss").
Non-alphabetic scripts
Some non-alphabetic scripts also employ symbols that function essentially as diacritics.
* Non-pure
abjads (such as
Hebrew language Hebrew and
Arabic language Arabic script) and
abugidas use diacritics for denoting
vowels. Hebrew and Arabic also indicate consonant doubling and change with diacritics; Hebrew and
Devanagari use them for foreign sounds. Devanagari and related abugidas also use a diacritical mark called a ''virama'' to mark the absence of a vowel.
*The
Thai language has its own version of diacritics.
* The Japanese
hiragana and
katakana syllabary syllabaries use the ''
dakuten'' (ã‚›) and ''
handakuten'' (゜) symbols, also known as ''ten-ten'' and ''maru'', to indicate
voiced consonants.
Alphabetization or collation
Different languages use different rules to put diacritic characters in
alphabetical order. French treats letters with diacritical marks the same as the underlying letter for purposes of ordering and dictionaries. The same is true in German, and in cases where two words differ only by an umlaut, the word without it is sorted first in German dictionaries (''eg'' "schon" and then "schön", or "fallen" and then "fällen"). However, when names are concerned (''eg'' in phone books or in author catalogues in libraries), umlauts are often treated as combinations of the vowel with a suffixed 'e'; Austrian phone books now treat umlauts as separate letters (immediately following the underlying letter).
The Scandinavian languages, by contrast, treat the diacritic characters ''ä'', ''ö'' and ''å'' as new and separate letters of the alphabet, and sort them after ''z''. Usually ''ä'' is sorted as equal to ''æ'' (ash) and ''ö'' is sorted as equal to ''ø'' (o-slash). Other diacritically marked letters are treated as variants of the underlying letter.
Other languages treat diacritically marked letters as variants of the underlying letter, but alphabetize them following the unmarked letter. In Spanish ''ñ'' is considered a new letter different from ''n'' and placed between ''n'' and ''o'', however, acute accents and diaeresis are ignored.
The technical term for alphabetization is
collation.
''See also:''
Alphabet,
Latin alphabet
Generation with computers
Modern computer technology was developed mostly in the English speaking countries, so data formats, keyboard layouts, etc. were developed with an English bias; a "simple" alphabet without diacritical marks. This has led to fears internationally that the marks and accents may become obsolete to facilitate the worldwide exchange of data. Efforts have been made to create
domain names that extend further than the English alphabet: the
Internationalized domain names, example: "pokémon.com".
Depending on the
keyboard layout, which differs amongst countries, it is more or less easy to enter letters with diacritics on computers and typewriters. Some have their own keys, some are created by first pressing the key with the diacritic mark followed by the letter to place it on. Such a key is sometimes referred to as a
dead key, as it produces no output of its own, but modifies the output of the key pressed after it.
On computers with the
Microsoft Windows operating system, one can also enter each character of the current
codepage, e.g.
ISO 8859-1 windows-1252, by holding the Alt key and entering the respective decimal position on the Num pad, e.g. Alt+0210 is Ã’. Additionally, on Windows XP, it is possible to enter any
Unicode character from the Basic Multilingual Plane (i.e. up to U+FFFF) by pressing Alt and then, with Alt still pressed, the plus sign and the digits of the Unicode number each after the other. Alt with plus, D and 2 yields U+00D2: Ã’.
In modern Microsoft Windows operating systems, the keyboard layout ''US International'' allows one to type almost all diacritics directly: "+e gives ë, ~+o gives õ etc.. In addition to this, the layout provides many 'special characters' behind the AltGr modifier: AltGr+t is þ, AltGr+z is æ, etc..
Using the [http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FB7B3DCD-D4C1-4943-9C74-D8DF57EF19D7&displaylang=en Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC)] people using Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 can edit or create any keyboard layout.
On
Apple Macintosh computers, there are keyboard shortcuts for the most common diacritics:
* Option-e followed by a vowel: places an acute accent.
* Option-u followed by a vowel: places a diaeresis.
* Option-n followed by a vowel or n: places a tilde.
* Option-` followed by a vowel: places a grave accent.
* Option-i followed by a vowel: places a circumflex.
* Option-c: places a c cedilla
On computers it is also a matter of available
codepages, whether you can use certain diacritics.
Unicode tries to solve this problem, among others.
In
GNOME applications (found on many
Linux and
Unix UNIX computers) arbitrary
Unicode characters may be entered by holding down the ctrl and shift keys while typing the
hexadecimal codepoint. After releasing ctrl-shift the digits will be converted into the symbol. For example ctrl-shift 1E3 produces {{unicode|ǣ}}.
Diacritics can be
Compose composed in most
X Window System X Window Systems.
With Unicode it is also possible to
Combining diacritical mark combine diacritical marks with most characters.
See also
*
Heavy metal umlaut
*
List of English words with diacritics
*
List of U.S. cities with diacritics
*
ß
*
ĸ
*
Å¿
*
Ç°
*
�
*

*
â?·
External links
-
Unicode
-
Orthographic diacritics and multilingual computing, by J.C. Wells
-
Diacritics Project - All you need to design a font with correct accents
-
Entering International Characters (in Linux, KDE)
-
Standard Character Set for Macintosh PDF at Adobe.com
-
Keyboard Help - Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer
Category:Diacritics
als:Diakritisches Zeichen
zh-min-nan:Phiat-im hû-hÅ?
ca:Signe diacrÃtic
cs:Diakritické znaménko
da:Accenttegn
de:Diakritisches Zeichen
es:Signo diacrÃtico
eo:Diakrita signo
fr:Diacritique
it:Segno diacritico
lt:Diakritiniai ženklai
nl:Diakritisch teken
ja:ダイアクリティカルマーク
no:Diakritisk tegn
nn:Aksentteikn
pl:Znaki diakrytyczne
pt:DiacrÃtico
ro:Semn diacritic
ru:ДиакритичеÑ?кий знак
fi:Diakriittiset merkit
sv:Diakritiskt tecken
wa:Diyacritike
zh:�音符�
*** Shopping-Tip: Diacritic
